This Time the Biggest Legal Gun in the Nation is on Our Side

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We have the United States Department of Justice not only filing an amici brief on behalf of the challenges to the Illinois gun ban, they have asked for time to come in and argue the government’s position.

Todd Vandermyde
September 12, 2025
DOJ arguing against Illinois’ gun ban ‘monumental,’ advocate says

It is rare but not unheard of for the Feds to support the 2nd Amendment. See the DOJ amicus brief: Office of the Solicitor General | District of Columbia v. Heller – Amicus (Merits) | United States Department of Justice.

Still, it is definitely a worth celebrating when you find that you have the biggest legal gun in the nation on your side.

Advocating for Personal Safety

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The first time I went to a shooting range I was shaking so bad I couldn’t even write my simple five letter name on the forms and I almost threw up in the waiting area.

Now I am a second amendment advocate.

I do not advocate for violence. It is never the answer. But evil exists and it is up to us to protect ourselves. In fact, one of the first things you learn in a gun safety class is that you never want to pull out the gun unless you absolutely have to. Your wallet, watch, jewelry, phone, car, whatever are not worth taking someone’s life. I want to make that clear.

I also want to make it clear that if you are not comfortable around guns or in using one, then make that a top priority now. Start small. Get comfortable. Get trained. This is especially directed at women! If you aren’t comfortable with a gun please consider other options for personal safety. I am a runner. I have MACE and even a taser that I carry whenever I’m running alone. I’ve heard too many stories.

This is in no way advocating for violence. What it is though is advocating for personal safety. It is us against evil and no one is coming to save us. It is your right to protect yourself and your family.

sarah @swkyhokie
Posted on X, September 11, 2025

This is about 1/3 of her post. Most of the rest is her Virginia Tech mass shooting story. She was unhurt but blamed guns for many years. Eventually she thought it through and realized she had it wrong.

Via a post from Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras.

Mistake or Intentional? Leftist Speech or False Flag?

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we all deserve gun safety. Gun violence is too prevalent in America.

Washington State Democratic Party
September 10, 2025
Washington state elected officials react to fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk | The Daily Chronicle

This seemed a little off and I wanted to verify the exact details. As this was posted on Bluesk I had to create an account and search from probably close to an hour before I finally found it. The text searches did not find it because the words were in an image:

That is interesting. Do you see the difference? It still throws in the idea that the assassination is a gun problem rather than a people or rhetoric problem. But it is not the primary point.

The article was written by Paige Cornwell at the Seattle Times. But it was picked up and posted elsewhere:

No one, apparently, noticed the error in the quote.

If you haven’t noticed the difference, I’ll point it out for you. Ms. Cornwell substituted “we all deserve gun safety” for “we all deserve safety.”

Perhaps I am hypersensitive to the phrase “gun safety.” Or perhaps Ms. Cornwell mistyped the quote in a hurry to get the article finished. Or the Washington State Democrats changed their post after Cornwell grabbed the quote. But a case can be made she did this intentionally. Copilot could not find any history of reporting on gun ownership in any form and tends toward it being an inadvertent error.

I have sent Ms. Page an email about the error. If I get a response, I will edit this post.

In related news, there are both Democrats and the Republicans jumping to conclusions about the motive of the shooter without evidence to support their beliefs. Some Rs claim the Ds are terrorists and should be hunted down and held responsible. Some Ds claim it was a false flag operation to distract from Trump’s involvement with Epstein and/or to justify the creation of a fascist state.

Having just finished Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and “Enemies of the State” (a good book, BTW), I can easily see the parallels to Nazis using political assassinations as justification for extermination of minorities/political-opponents. And, of course, the political left has a tendency to view violence as just another form of speech.

I’m going to wait for evidence before expressing an opinion. However, it is full speed ahead on getting the underground bunker in Idaho livable.

Update: It has been almost 24 hours since I sent her an email asking if it was intentional or not. I have not received a response.

Draw your own conclusions.

A Magnet for Criminals

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Gun control doesn’t stop bad guys. It’s a magnet for criminals.

Erich Pratt
Senior Vice President
Gun Owners of America
September 9, 2025

I really admire the ability to succinctly express powerful ideas.

A Marxist Tell

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Gun makers are increasingly competing for a decreasing market share. That’s why you see this push for an aggressive deregulatory agenda … That’s what animates this attack on the NFA.

 Hudson Munoz
Executive director of Guns Down America
September 5, 2025
Inside the gun absolutists’ bold plot to repeal one of America’s strongest firearms laws

What you see is here is a very strong indicator of a Marxist. The attribution of something they see as bad in the world as due to “corporate greed”, “capitalism”, etc. You used to hear organizations like the Brady Campaign insist that gun manufactures were “flooding the streets” with guns.

It seems beyond their comprehension that markets drive the direction of corporations. Apparently, in their minds, people do not have free will or ability to decide for themselves what they want to spend their own money on. And that extends to people pushing legislators to pass, or repeal, laws that further the interests of individuals. Do they think corporations vote instead of individuals?

And if you doubt this organization has an evil agenda, check out this line from their website:

Gun violence can’t happen where there aren’t guns, and guns are not inevitable.

The organization is probably just one person, Igor Volsky, and is only of significance because it demonstrates the Marxist tell in how they frame the view of gun owners being allowed to purchase gun accessories with fewer restrictions.

Seriously Unconstitutional or Trolling?

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Gun owners already know what it’s like for the government to penalize them for crimes they did not commit.  We shouldn’t even consider such an extreme response to heinous act committed by one disturbed individual, much less implement it, no matter how horrible the crime. The deranged Minneapolis killer is no longer a threat to anybody, and we needn’t make scapegoats of others who had nothing to do with that outrage, just to create the impression something is being done.

The ironic aspect of this controversy is that some in the liberal media are suddenly supporting gun rights because somebody in the Trump administration is talking about restricting transgenders from exercising their Second Amendment rights. Perhaps they will learn something from this.

The government, no matter who is in charge, must understand that enumerated rights protected by the Constitution cannot be stripped away for what amounts to a publicity stunt. If we allow that to happen to one minority group, it could happen to another group, and then another, until the right becomes a distant memory, especially for those of us who have worked so hard to protect it. This is a bad idea, and it needs to go away immediately.

Alan Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
September 5, 2025
CCRKBA: DOJ SHOULDN’T BAN GUNS FOR TRANS PEOPLE OVER INDIVIDUAL CRIMES | Citizens Committee For The Right To Keep And Bear Arms

Mark Smith has a different take, which I think is more likely. And I would not be surprised if Gottlieb also is inclined to believe Mark’s take but plays it straight to score points with the rights are for everyone concept.

The TL;DR; version from Mark is that Trump is trolling the political left to get them to proclaim gun rights are for people of all sexual orientation and the Trump administration is going to violate the constitutional rights of an oppressed minority.

Assuming Mark has the correct angle on this, I could see this causing a few heads to “explode”. If it doesn’t, it was still a good try.

If You Begin with Talking About Honesty, You Probably are Dishonest

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You have to be honest, and say what will actually work, which is what nobody wants to hear, which is that there are just simply way too many firearms, and they are way too accessible.

And they’re too powerful, even handguns too, again, that’s why in Australia … It doesn’t matter if it’s not politically acceptable to say it. I’m not here as a politician or anyone who works in politics. I’m a journalist. Whether or not you like it, the only thing that really works, if you really wanted to bring down gun violence, was to do what Australia did and to do what many other countries in Europe do.

Mike Spies
Senior Staff Writer The Trace
August 27, 2025
Corporate Media Outlets Only Too Happy to Help Regurgitate Michael Bloomberg’s Anti-Gun Agitprop – Shooting News Weekly

Whenever someone starts a conversation with something to the effect of, “I’m going to be honest with you…” Then that, almost for certain, means their normal state is dishonesty. Furthermore, they are being dishonest now and trying to convince you to believe their lies. Here, Spies* is demonstrating a minor variation on that maxim.

Heinlein once made a similar observation with, “Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash.”

Also, never let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.


* One has to wonder, is his dishonesty so embedded in his ancestor’s behavior that they were given this as a family name?

The Devil is in the Details

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It’s easy to talk about “sensible gun control” when you don’t actually lay out what that means.

spf4000
August 31, 2025
What “Meaningful Gun Control” is this author talking about? : r/liberalgunowners

You see this all the time in various forms. People will make some statement or series of statements that sound good, but do not include details. It might be better roads and bridges but no details about how it will be paid for. It might be affordable housing but do not mention they intend to take money from other people to pay for the housing.

Politicians are great on broad stroke statements. But they either don’t understand details are important, or they are deliberately hiding the devil in the details of what they intend to do.

Then the Gun Control Debate is Over

Via Political Pug @pug_political:

See also here and here.

There should not have ever been a debate. It should have been long prison sentences for every politician who voted for infringements.

No Excuse

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Events like these should not be our ‘normal.’ The simple solution is to pass sensible gun control. Without that, these tragedies will continue to happen, and children will continue to die.

Shri Thanedar
U.S. Representative, D-Mich
August 27, 2025
Dem lawmakers call for gun control after Minneapolis school shooting

In these days there is no excuse for not knowing that gun control is not the answer. It just doesn’t work.

I’m reminded of H. L. Mencken’s famous quote:

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.

Because he has not excuse for saying something that stupid. I have to conclude it is a deliberate lie to further some unstated agenda. Therefore, I would also like to suggest Representative Thanedar read 18 U.S. Code § 242.

They Think of People Like Cattle

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When a patient comes into an emergency room, the doctors may or may not know what happened. They just know the patient was shot. Maybe they get some story from the paramedics about what happened, but that’s still only a small sliver of what’s really going on in the world of guns.

The doctors don’t see the 97-year-old woman who is only able to sleep at night because of the revolver in her nightstand. They don’t see the stalking victim who no longer fears for her safety after buying a Glock 19. They don’t see the guy who got shot dead by a father after the dude broke into the daughter’s bedroom in order to sexually assault her. They don’t see the mugger who ran away when his 30-year-old female target produced a firearm.

They don’t see any of that.

What they see is an unfortunate sliver of what all happens on a daily basis with guns.

More than that, how the shooter got a gun is never part of what they see in the ERs and ORs of this country. That comes later, and they’re often pontificating on the dangers of gun rights, all while being clueless about the fact that the shooting victim they treated was shot by an 18-year-old convicted felon with an illegally obtained handgun.

They don’t know nearly as much as many of them believe, but they’re so blinded by their own self-important arrogance that they can’t accept there’s more to the story.

Tom Knighton
August 21, 2025
Please Spare Us the Doctors Pushing Gun Control. Nobody Cares. – Bearing Arms

Good points.

Of course, some people have a far less nuanced view of things. There are people who see a violent criminal with a gunshot wound no different than an innocent criminal victim. It has been a while but as I have explained before sometimes these people view the general population as livestock. As a cattle owner, you don’t really care which cow started the fight. You don’t want any of them to be injured. They are, generally, of equal value to you whether they have a very pleasant personality or they are bullies to the other cattle in the herd.

I suspect the doctor Knighton was writing about is one of those people. As a doctor he is relatively smart and knows how to read and research. Yet the gunshot victims he sees are a gun problem and not a people problem.

They Know we are not a Criminal Threat

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While we acknowledge more guns pose a greater threat to our communities, CPL holders tend to be responsible gun owners.

Renée Hopkins
CEO of the Washington-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility
July 21, 2025
More Washingtonians than ever have a concealed carry license

In response, Dave Workman said: Somebody Finally Admits It!

At the highest levels the anti-gun people know CPL gun owners are not a threat to society. But they want us disarmed anyway.

Respond appropriately.

The Second Amendment is No Different.

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Common sense dictates that the right to bear arms requires a right to acquire arms, just as the right to free press necessarily includes the right to acquire a printing press, or the right to freely practice religion necessarily rests on a right to acquire a sacred text. Legal interpretation follows that common sense….

The burden imposed by a cooling-off period is brought into sharper focus when considered in the context of other constitutional rights. A carte blanche one-week cooling-off period to publish news stories? Unconstitutional. Temporary closures of churches during COVID-19? Unconstitutional. Roman Cath. Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (2020) (“The loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.” If a criminal defendant had to wait thirty days after his arraignment before he could seek legal counsel so that he would not unduly resist his prosecution? Unconstitutional, of course. See Rothgery v. Gillespie Cnty. (“[C]ounsel must be appointed within a reasonable time after attachment to allow for adequate representation at any critical stage before trial.”). The Second Amendment is no different.

Timothy Tymkovich
Tenth Circuit Judge
August 19, 2025
7-Day “Cooling-Off” Period for Gun Purchases Struck Down by Tenth Circuit Panel – Reason.com

As Justice Thomas said in June of 2015, “Second Amendment rights are no less protected by our Constitution than other rights enumerated in that document.”

I am seeing more and more evidence that the lower courts are getting a clue. It took, metaphorically, a clue by four to get their attention but they are starting to come around.

Dust in the Dustbin

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Today, March for Our Lives is in disarray. Funding shortfalls and a rift between its board and younger staffers… have strained the organization. And a recently filed federal lawsuit accuses the board of racism and retaliation.

On March 20 of this year, just before the seven-year anniversary of its celebrated rallies, MFOL terminated 13 of its 16 full-time employees.

Firearms Policy Coalition @gunpolicy
Posted on X, August 20, 2025

See also: Inside the Chaos at March for Our Lives.

As I said the other day, our recent progress has to be putting pressure on donations.

At this point MFOLs has to be rendered powerless to cause us any damage. I think it is extremely unlikely they will recover. They are just dust in the dustbin of history.

Trusting the Science

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Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

Leah Libresco
October 3, 2017
Opinion | I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise. – The Washington Post

Reality is tough. And when reality contradicts what you firmly believe, it is even harder to see and accept. I have to give Libresco a lot of credit for this.

A Good Shoot

If there is such a thing as a good shoot, it is really just one of the least bad outcomes, this is one of them:

An Illinois mother shot and killed a man accused of breaking into her home at night, police say.

The break-in happened at about 10:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 15, the Joliet Police Department said in a news release.

According to police, the woman heard what sounded like someone forcing their way into her home, so she hid in an upstairs bedroom closet with her baby, and armed herself with a gun.

When the man went into the bedroom, she opened fire, hitting him in the head, police said.

Officers arrived to find the man “unresponsive,” and he was confirmed dead at the scene, according to the department.

The man was wearing gloves and had a screwdriver, police said, adding that there were “signs of forced entry.” The woman told police she didn’t know the man.

Even with the early retirement, someone made a very poor career choice that night.

Another Brick in the Wall

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Cooling-off periods do not fit into any historically grounded exceptions to the right to keep and bear arms, and burden conduct within the Second Amendment’s scope. We conclude that New Mexico’s Waiting Period Act is likely an unconstitutional burden on the Second Amendment rights of its citizens.

Timothy Tymkovich
US federal appellate judge for the 10th Circuit
August 19, 2025
Federal Appeals Court blocks New Mexico’s 7-Day gun purchase waiting period

It is a small step. But the steps add up.

The anti-gun people have to be getting very depressed. Not just because of the lost ground but because this is going to reduce donations. Why donate money when progress toward a full gun ban is completely blocked?

On the other hand, our side should be donating money to the groups most effective in the courts. The momentum is on our side. Let’s push this as fast as we practically can.

Number 30 to Help Bury the Racist Roots

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Permitting laws are nothing less than a burdensome tax on law-abiding citizens who wish to self-defend. Having North Carolina become the 30th permitless carry state is something these lawmakers should be proud of. We appreciate Representative Penny’s leadership in committing to an override, and we salute all the other legislators who are resolved to end a policy that’s deeply rooted in a racist past.

Alan Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
August 18, 2025
CCRKBA CELEBRATES PROGRESS IN NORTH CAROLINA ON PERMITLESS CARRY | Citizens Committee For The Right To Keep And Bear Arms

Never forget the racist history of gun control:

A First by the Ninth Circuit

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Today’s mandate issued by the Ninth Circuit marks the first time the court has issued a final decision striking down a law for infringing on the Second Amendment. Between Heller and Bruen, every case heard by a panel which concluded the law was contrary to the Second Amendment was reheard en banc by the court and ultimately upheld. This is a historic victory for Second Amendment rights in the Ninth Circuit and marks a measurable defeat for Governor Newsom and the legislature’s attempts to curtail the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms in California.

Adam Kraut
SAF Executive Director
August 14, 2025
SAF, PARTNERS SECURE HISTORIC VICTORY IN NINTH CIRCUIT – Second Amendment Foundation

The defendants chose not to request an en banc hearing, so we don’t need to worry about that anymore. This is the final decision.

By the Time You Call the Cops

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By the time you call the cops the crime is already done.

(Vanessa) Gothix @GothixTV
Posted on X, August 11, 2025

The full video:

I have nothing more to add. As the Second Amendment Foundation said she, “Nailed it.”