There’s an illegal flow of guns into states across the country from a couple states with weaker gun laws. We should at least have a penalty to make sure that we can fund enforcement of this common sense idea.
CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb countered, “How about penalizing New York for all the criminals they release on cashless bail, who then commit crimes in other states?”
The veteran gun rights advocate said New York doesn’t have a “gun problem, it’s got a criminal justice problem.”
Nobody is above the law. This Department will not tolerate obstruction, will enforce federal immigration law, and will hold criminals to account—even those who wear robes.
It is good to have a demonstration that at least state judges with be prosecuted for violating Federal law. We still have some distance to go in moving the Overton Window far enough to prosecute them for violating the 2nd Amendment. But this will help make the threat of prosecution, in a year or five, more real.
The Leftroids claim that European and American civilization was built by black slaves, and that Africa is a shithole of savagery because of ‘colonization’. Even though it’s been a shithole since long before any European ever set foot there. So, they’re saying that black people can only build a civilization if they’re enslaved and told exactly what to do?
In America, we don’t need to look to our nation’s leader for an explanation of how it happened. We know it will happen again, likely too many times to count.
But America’s deep, stubborn will against any logical or sensible gun control is what keeps us stuck in this cycle. We must not become numb to the grief, loss and horror of gun violence.
Ms. Epley, we already have a very logical and sensible gun law on the books. And if it was enforced it would dramatically reduce the number of mass shootings. The problem is there is not enough political will to enforce it.
Maybe you have heard of this law. It is called the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It can and should be enforced via 18 USC 241 and 242.
We are supporting Ms. Gardner’s petition for certiorari because, as we state in the amicus, a general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense cannot coexist with each state having a requirement that visitors from other states first undergo a costly and time-consuming process. The fact she went through the permit procedure in Virginia should be ample proof she is not a criminal, and besides that, she was acting in self-defense from what she believed was road rage and an attempt to do her harm.
If the high court takes this case for review, it could result in a ruling which could mandate national concealed carry reciprocity. Such a ruling would definitely benefit our members and supporters nationwide.
That she is an adult, is not subject to involuntary confinement, and not a fugitive from justice should be ample proof of her fitness to exercise her right to keep and bear arms. But, bargaining for what you believe to be achievable and having a good chance of winning is better than demanding something you have a near zero chance of getting and losing.
Let normalcy bias do its thing then get more next time. That is what the anti-freedom people have been doing for a long time. More than one can play this game.
A shooter dressed in black killed at least two people and wounded eight others at Brown University on Saturday during final exams on the Ivy League campus, authorities said, and police were searching for the suspect.
Officers scattered across the campus and into an affluent neighborhood filled with historic and stately brick homes, searching academic buildings, backyards and porches for hours late into the night after the shooting erupted in the afternoon.
I hope they quickly find the murderer and justice is delivered.
When Jon Richelieu-Booth boarded a plane home to England after a Florida vacation, he had no reason to believe a simple photo — a harmless picture of himself shooting a legally rented shotgun at a gun range — would soon turn his life upside down.
…
The message is always the same: give up a little freedom now…we promise it’s for your own good. Richelieu-Booth’s arrest shows exactly where that road leads.
The truth is simple: freedom dies gradually… until it dies suddenly. That’s why the fight for the Second Amendment isn’t just about guns. It’s about the entire structure of American liberty. It’s about ensuring that no government — federal, state, local, or foreign — can do to an American what British authorities did to that IT consultant.
Our rights are exceptional. They are fragile. And they survive only when the people refuse to surrender them.
If we want our children and grandchildren to inherit a free nation — a nation where a photo of a gun is just a photo — then we must fight harder than ever to protect the liberties that make America the last stronghold of individual freedom. Because what happened in England must never become normal here.
BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, in conjunction with the New Jersey Firearms Owners Syndicate and National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action, is celebrating the 12th New Jersey municipality to pass a permit-to-carry fee rebate resolution.
A grassroots movement which began over the summer is spreading across the Garden State. On Nov. 25, Howell, N.J. joined 11 other towns in refunding their citizens’ permit-to-carry fees.
Post-Bruen, New Jersey lawmakers imposed additional and onerous fees to their permit-to-carry application process. A $50 fee was allocated to a victims compensation fund (since found unconstitutional by the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals) and $150 to local municipalities. Englishtown was the first in the state to pass a resolution refunding the $150 fee back to applicants. The Howell council unanimously (with one member absent) resolved to refund $125 of its portion of the fee.
“There are now a dozen municipalities in the Garden State that have decided to respect the rights of their citizens by not imposing onerous fees on them to exercise a constitutional right,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “As more towns resolve that the law passed by the New Jersey legislature is unconstitutional, it weakens the grip the anti-liberty forces have on the people. We’re proud of the grassroots efforts of our members and the members of our partners — the NRA-ILA and NJFOS — in this fight.”
In addition to Howell and Englishtown, the following municipalities have also nullified their permitting fees: Beachwood, Butler, Dumont, Franklin Borough, Hardyston, Hopatcong, Medford Lakes, and Vernon. Cresskill and Readington passed ordinances, not just resolutions.
Howell Councilman Ian Nadel, who led the effort, observed, “The Second Amendment is the only Amendment that seems to be under repeated attack, especially in the state of New Jersey.”
Over $125,000 per year in exorbitant and unconstitutional fees have been eliminated for nearly 200,000 New Jerseyans with the passage of this resolution.
If you’re interested in raising a permit-to-carry rebate resolution in your jurisdiction, reach out to our boots-on-the-ground partners at NJFOS HERE. A copy of the joint policy brief with model resolution can be found HERE.
Unless they opened up varmint season on the New Jersey politicians, I’m not sure why anyone would want to live or even visit there. But some people claim to have compelling reasons. So, I’m happy some of them are a baby step closer to having their right to keep and bear arms respected.
I have to wonder what their point is. What do they think or are trying to imply about the consequences of a state having a good or poor grade? I think it is very telling they do not explicitly say anything about that.
I would bet they know that if they compared this to the violent crime rate this report card would be damaging to their agenda. Here is a scatter plot to give you a clue:
And if you want to get really geeky here are the correlation numbers and narrative from Copilot:
The Pearson correlation coefficient between gun safety grade (ordinal) and violent crime rate is about 0.13, with a p‑value of ~0.49. This means there is a weak positive correlation that is not statistically significant.
📊 What This Means
Coefficient (0.13): A value close to 0 indicates little to no linear relationship. Here, the correlation is weak and positive, suggesting that states with weaker gun safety grades (higher ordinal values) slightly tend to have higher violent crime rates, but the effect is minimal.
P‑value (~0.49): Since this is much greater than the common threshold of 0.05, the correlation is not statistically significant. In other words, the observed relationship could easily be due to chance.
Interpretation: Gun safety grades and violent crime rates do not show a strong or reliable linear relationship in this dataset. Some states with strong gun laws (A grades) still have high crime rates (e.g., Washington, Colorado), while some F‑grade states have moderate rates (e.g., Indiana, Georgia).
This is just another example of anti-gun people being unable say anything without it being a lie or at least deceptive.
And even if the numbers looked bad for gun ownership, that is irrelevant to the 2nd Amendment law. Rights are not subject to negation based on the misbehavior of criminals. We don’t throw out the 4th, 5th, and/or 8th Amendments because these protections make it more difficult to prosecute criminals. The same applies the 2nd Amendment.
Prosecutions are not in view, but I can see a map on a whiteboard in the Department of Justice on how to get there from here. I asked Grok and Copilot to speculate on the possibility of prosecutions under 18 USC 241 and/or 242. Here are the more interesting parts of the discussions:
Copilot:
Historical Use of 18 U.S.C. § 241
Conspiracy statute: § 241 criminalizes conspiracies to deprive rights. It was first enacted in 1870 to combat KKK terror against Black voters.
Election interference: Recently, it was used in prosecutions for conspiracies to suppress voting rights, including charges against Douglass Mackey (for online voter suppression) and in investigations tied to January 6.
Scope: It applies broadly to conspiracies against any constitutional right, but prosecutions are rare and usually tied to voting or racial discrimination.
🔍 Implications for Second Amendment Enforcement
§ 242 (individual acts): Could apply if police knowingly confiscate firearms without due process or target lawful gun owners. This parallels past prosecutions for unlawful arrests or excessive force.
§ 241 (conspiracies): Could apply if officials or agencies coordinate to suppress gun rights — for example, a conspiracy to intimidate citizens from exercising lawful firearm ownership.
Politicians: Legislative immunity makes prosecutions of lawmakers unlikely. Enforcement would more plausibly target executive officials or law enforcement carrying out unconstitutional policies.
Civil vs. criminal: Historically, DOJ has leaned on civil remedies (consent decrees, lawsuits) rather than criminal prosecutions. Criminal cases under §§ 241–242 are reserved for egregious, intentional violations.
📈 Speculative Outlook
Most likely: Expanded civil rights litigation against restrictive gun laws.
Possible but rare: Criminal prosecutions of law enforcement under § 242 for willful firearm rights violations.
Least likely: Criminal prosecutions of politicians under § 241, given constitutional protections and prosecutorial discretion.
Grok:
Pathways to the Docket: From Desk Jockeys to Brass
Picture this: The unit’s hotline lights up with complaints about a county clerk in, say, Chicago—deliberately burying CCW apps under mountains of “training requirements” invented post-Bruen, knowing full well the Supreme Court nixed such hurdles. If emails or depositions reveal the clerk’s motive (“Keep guns out of the wrong hands,” per internal notes), that’s prima facie willfulness: a solo deprivation under color of law. The LA County probe, already underway for backlog abuses, could morph into a § 242 referral if it uncovers a rogue supervisor greenlighting the delays.
For politicians, it’s thornier but not off the table. A mayor enforcing a local “sensitive places” ban broader than Bruen allows—say, prohibiting carry in all parks, willfully ignoring federal precedent—might qualify if they personally direct enforcement squads to harass permit holders. Legislators enjoy speech-or-debate immunity, but executive-branch pols (governors signing defiance-laden bills) could face heat if their actions cross into implementation. Gun rights litigators have floated § 242 for years in amicus briefs, arguing that unconstitutional seizures equate to Fourth Amendment deprivations intertwined with 2A. With Dhillon’s vow for “a lot more action,” a test case could drop by mid-2026, especially if the Firearms Policy Coalition (which lobbied for the unit) supplies the plaintiffs.
Tying it to § 241? These aren’t mutually exclusive: A sheriff conspiring with deputies (§ 241) while personally pulling triggers on denials (§ 242) could net dual charges, amplifying deterrence.
Hurdles Higher Than a Pistol Grip: Willfulness and Wiggle Room
§ 242’s killer requirement—willful intent—makes it a prosecutor’s nightmare. Courts demand more than negligence; officials must know their act violates a “clearly established” right. Post-Bruen, that’s arguable for “may-issue” holdouts, but gray-area regs (e.g., “assault weapon” definitions) give cover: “I thought it was legal!” The statute’s underuse in non-violence cases—fewer than 200 § 242 indictments yearly, mostly brutality—suggests prosecutors shy from 2A novelty.
Politically, it’s dynamite: Indicting blue-city cops under a red-led DOJ screams partisanship, inviting congressional probes or SCOTUS stays. And while the unit reallocates civil resources, criminal pursuits demand FBI muscle—scarce amid other priorities.
The Bigger Picture: A One-Two Punch for Accountability?
Layering § 242 atop § 241 could transform the unit from litigator to inquisitor, making gun rights a frontline civil rights battle. Near-term? Civil suits dominate, with § 242 as a shadow threat to coax settlements. But if a high-profile denial spirals into violence—say, a denied applicant victimized, traceable to official stonewalling—expect indictments by 2027. It’s a vision of equity: Treating 2A infringements like any other rights grab, potentially chilling overreach without mass arrests.
The emphasis in that last paragraph is my addition.
Indictments by 2027 is a pleasant thought. But that expectation is conditional upon the criminals being stupid as well as evil. We can only hope.
The inch was seemingly given, so it is not surprising to see pursuit of the mile. Gun ban advocates are emboldened by their perceived victories in firearm production changes, and Ruger is the latest target on a list that won’t end until the firearm prohibition lobby decides what guns are allowed to be sold or courts step in to enforce the law.
But, of course, eventually we will have to start prosecuting these criminals before they will stop infringing on our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
While it is a matter of entrepreneurial judgment and not economic theory to affirm gold’s superiority as the ultimate “store of value” and potentially even as the preferred replacement for fiat monies (though silver has often been a strong competitor to gold for the latter role), I must agree with Lagarde’s assessment of the empirical facts concerning reserve asset competition, not with Powell’s dismissive attitude about gold—when the chips are down and the world is forced to turn to an unconditionally trustworthy reserve of purchasing power, the world will turn to gold. What soaring gold prices might indicate is that the world is now turning to gold.
The prices are certainly rising. This is just this year:
I see the stumbling of Bitcoin. I see Trump and Elon fail to get the U.S. deficit under control. I see the mounting U.S. debt becoming a huge, unstoppable monster. I wonder if the price of gold reflects a lack of confidence in the U.S. dollar. I think of the Zimbabwe dollar (I have trillions of them). Our country is not Zimbabwe, Argentina, or Venezuela so if someday we do have runaway inflation, it almost for certain will not be on the scale of those countries. But if it does happen, it could happen very rapidly. These events frequently have high emotional content. It is like someone shouted fire in a large room with not enough exits. A lot of people get trampled who would have survived had everyone remained calm.
And, of course, gold may not be the thing that saves people in a stampede. Maybe it will be guns and ammo to defend against the looters searching for food or even, as in the movie Doctor Zhivago, stealing the lumber from your home to burn for warmth.
If you do decide to buy gold, please remember my advice.
Published reports confirm that many Jewish New Yorkers have been arming themselves in worrisome anticipation of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani—described by the New York Post as a “Muslim radical socialist”—taking office and opening a floodgate of hatred toward the city’s Jewish population.
Even The Times of Israel is reporting how Jewish gun owners, firearms instructors and security professionals in the Big Apple are witnessing a major surge in demand for firearms training, and applications for concealed carry permits. Anti-Semitic rhetoric has led to increased violence against Jews across the United States.
Deep down, I think most people know you can vote your way in, but you to shoot your way out. This is just another data point confirming that hypothesis.
I would like to welcome all the new gun owners Mamdani has created over to the right side of history. I think the NSSF should send Mamdani a thank you card on behalf of all the gun manufacturers.
The Civil Rights Division’s new focus on the Second Amendment, which is far outside its longstanding mission, is moving us even further away from our nation’s commitment to protecting all Americans’ civil rights.
Is she so “tone deaf” she cannot even hear her own words? She contradicts herself in a single sentence. How can the Civil Rights Division be moving away from protecting “all Americans’ civil rights” by protecting a civil right they have never protected in the past?
I would also like to point out the article authors don’t mention the contradiction either.
This is mental illness and/or a deliberate intent of manipulation.
I would like to emphasize the “former” in her title. She richly deserves it.
If the FPC (see also here) and SAF (see also here) have their way, then eventually the price of a Thompson clone could drop to a few hundred present day dollars.
