All law-abiding Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms for self-defense. This right is not a luxury reserved for a privileged few, but a fundamental element of our republic. You don’t need a law degree to recognize that charging a fee several times higher than the cost of the firearm itself is illogical, and an unconstitutional attempt to impede Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
* While this isn’t an actual win, it is more like more like Mike Tyson joining your side in a barroom brawl, it is something to celebrate and likely means the good guys will win.
North Carolina Democrat state legislative candidate Shelly Headen posted a Facebook story from a vacation showing her in front of ovens in a German concentration camp memorial, saying, “Visiting Dauchau [sic] Concentration Camp in Germany… This is where Trump supporters belong.”
I visited Auschwitz. I think people should visit and consider the implications for the right to keep and bear arms. But that isn’t what Ms. Headen had in mind.
It is genuinely upsetting how many people celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death with “Kirkiversary” posts. Some here, tons more on TikTok. The message is clear; if you disagree with progressive orthodoxy, they want you dead and will celebrate your murder too. That includes a young father like Charlie Kirk whose major “crime” was engaging in civil debate with them.
And these posts have thousands or hundreds of thousands of likes, these aren’t fringe edgelords, this is a major view at least among the progressive base. Violence and intimidation has become an accepted strategy for them.
I hate that I have to share a country with these broken people, they must be defeated and marginalized just as much as the brainrotted elements of the Candace Owens right.
I just can’t grasp their mindset. If some leftist commentator I despised was murdered for their views, I can confidently say I would not celebrate it, and you should really do some serious soul searching if that is who you have become. This shouldn’t even need to be debated.
Celebration of assassination and poltical violence is a very dark road to go down. But after Kirk, and their celebration of Mangione, and all the cheering for Trump assassins, it is safe to say it is what a significant portion of the progressive/DSA left now believes. This is who they are.
Oh, and they want to take your guns still. You know, for “safety.”
It is especially upsetting because this woman debated Charlie Kirk. He was nice to her. Didn't matter. Because he disagreed with her views, she apparently thinks his life was fair game. pic.twitter.com/iEvcwoIU2L
He says, “I just can’t grasp their mindset.” I think I can.
My hypothesis is there are two different ways to model their behavior. At a more basic level they are close to the same.
1) They are unable to think rationally. As I have explained before this is a process failure (Peterson Syndrome). It is psychologically uncomfortable for there to be many other people which believe differently from them. Being part of the “one true tribe” is important to them. Other tribes are a threat to them.
2) They are able to think rationally. They know they are unable to rationally refute the opposition. They cannot tolerate the public humiliation of being wrong. Silencing their opponent is more comfortable than admitting they were wrong.
In both cases they have an investment in their beliefs. It could be an emotional investment. Or it could be a political or power investment that is being threatened. Threats need to be neutralized.
It now makes sense when they say they feel unsafe because you express an opinion different from them.
It makes sense when people call themselves “gun safety advocates.” Taking your guns makes it safer to neutralize these sorts of threats to their investments.
The right to keep and bear arms is among the most cherished liberties secured by our Constitution and rooted in the timeless truth that our rights are endowed by Almighty God, not granted by government. This foundational freedom depends upon citizens who exercise it with discipline, integrity, and care, understanding that the blessings of liberty are preserved through personal responsibility and a steadfast commitment to the common good.
“You know, we can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles—it’s something I strongly support—we can’t be so fixated on that that we are unable to think about the reality of life that millions of Americans face on streets that are unsafe, under conditions that no other nation—no other nations—has permitted to exist. BIll Clinton March 1, 1993 Debunked: “We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary .. | Metabunk
Major breaking news as the winds in favor of the Second Amendment continue in like a flood. This victory in federal court in Maryland. That’s right. A huge win for the Second Amendment in Montgomery County, Maryland in federal court down there, knocking out so-called sensitive places laws that prevented a Jewish congregation from bringing weapons to protect themselves at synagogue. A crazily great win for the Second Amendment. And by the way, for the first amendment, it all works together:
States District Court for the District of Delaware knocking out Delaware’s so-called ghost gun rules which are nothing more than preventing Americans seconds from being able to make their own firearms:
A huge federal court of appeals decision has just come out in favor of the Second Amendment saying that simply carrying a gun without more is not a basis for stopping someone on the suspicion that they are criminals or committed a crime:
I don’t think I will ever get tired of winning. Prove me wrong.
They heard an argument about extending the same passion and sympathy to more women who murdered their children—
and their conditioning told them this was justice.
That’s not compassion.
That’s what happens when your ideology eats your conscience and starts wearing its skin.
These people have been trained so thoroughly to locate inequality that they can find oppression inside a prison full of child murderers before they can find three murdered children.
Room full of women on the Oprah show starts cheering after a doctor says that black female child murderers need to be supported too, not just the white child murderers like Lindsay Clancy.
"I want us to have the same passion for [female child murderers] who don't look like… pic.twitter.com/VbaQfq9BYi
This is for people who think something like the 10s of millions of people killed by their own governments in Nazi Germany, the USSR, China, Cambodia, etc. can’t happen here.
Here we have an entire class of people seeing “justice” in not just a government murdering its own citizens, but a woman being able to murder her own children without serious punishment.
That they can justify that mindset to themselves and openly advocate for it; genocide is totally on the table. How do you talk someone like this out of this mindset? What do you do when they have made their mind up about murdering all the Jews, homosexuals, capitalists, Catholics, black people, or white people?
I only know of one thing that has any hope of mass changing of minds like that in time to save the lives of the innocents. High velocity lead.
…then apply it to incentives to commit crime. Disarming everyone will only make committing crime safer and will increase crime and anti-social behavior. Make everyone carry condition 1, and we’ll reduce ADs and NDs as well.
Mike H. September 6, 2026
Via email from Mike.
The following are the primary points of the Instagram post:
For as much as I’ve mellowed on the libertarian shit, I’m starting to regret as a younger man I didn’t just put all my money into gold and machine guns.
I usually avoid quoting long posts in their entirety. I’m making an exception for this because there is stuff here that I was unaware of. Independently any one of these would just be a speed bump for the next anti-gunowner administration. Together, combined with what is coming down the road in the next few years, this is closer to a brick wall.
The second Trump Administration has thus far exceeded all expectations when it comes to its nearly unprecedented defense of the Second Amendment. While Trump’s first term gave us hugely important wins on judicial appointments at SCOTUS and the lower courts, that was just about all we got. This term is much different. We are still getting good judicial picks, but are also making so much more progress beyond that baseline. This has been the first time any Department of Justice has meaningfully championed the Second Amendment since the days of the Freedmen’s Bureau during Reconstruction.
Given that, I thought it made sense to maintain a list summarizing the Trump Administration’s actions related to gun rights. I will do my best to keep this updated. If you can think of important things I missed, list them in the comments below.
LAST UPDATED: September 4, 2026.
General News
1. President Trump issues an executive order to defend the Second Amendment and directing further action.
5. US concedes inUS v. Petersonthat suppressors enjoy some degree of Second Amendment protection and may not be totally banned (an important concession to be used in states with total bans).
6. “Big Beautiful Bill” zeroes the tax on suppressors and SBRs, though registration requirement remains(Update: enjoined for now, at least as to members of the Plaintiffs orgs in two cases). ATF manages the application surge smoothly.
7. Department of Veterans Affairs ceases reporting Veterans to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System as “prohibited persons” only because they need help from a fiduciary in managing their VA benefits.
13. A number of judges have been confirmed to the lower courts, including Emil Bove and Jennifer Mascott in the Third Circuit, both of whom played a role in securing the first circuit court win on “assault weapon” and magazine bans.
14. After losing NFA consolidated cases ofSilencer Shop v. ATFandJensen v. ATF, DOJ decides against seeking to stay the District Court injunction, meaning the registration requirements are unenforceable against the Plaintiffs in the case. But questions remain as of August 13, 2026, including whether DOJ will appeal.
🚨 BREAKING: I’ve received confirmation from the Trump Administration that the DOJ will NOT appeal our historic court victory against the NFA.
THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP and Attorney General Blanche, for delivering the most significant Second Amendment win in OVER 90 YEARS!
15. In an Office of the Legal Counsel Opinion, DOJ concludes that Section 930(d)(3) of title 18, U.S. Code, permits the lawful carrying of constitutionally protected firearms in post offices that are generally open to the public. (This follows SAF’s win on the issue inFPC, et al. v. Bondi).
16. Tate Adamiak, George Peterson, and others convicted of constitutionally questionable gun-related crimes pardoned.
Tate Adamiak endured what amounts to political persecution. His convictions under the Biden administration were premised on major factual misrepresentations by the government and had significant constitutional infirmities, as we recently argued in an amicus brief in his favor.… pic.twitter.com/dtv3GBbDn2
— National Association for Gun Rights (@gunrights) September 4, 2026
Civil Rights Lawsuits
1. Sued Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department over its years-long wait times for carry permits. They cited SAF’s lawsuit in their initial pattern-or-practice investigation too.
In its amended complaint against Washington DC's "assault weapon" ban, the US DOJ has now added a claim that the District's total ban on suppressors is also unconstitutional. pic.twitter.com/diptits9Zv
1. Massive rights restoration process being implemented, with Final Rule published on August 17, 2026. While imperfect (SAF submitted a comment letter, and the final rule addressed some of our concerns), it’s probably the biggest step forward on this front we have yet to see.
2. ATF rule proposed to tighten up the definition of “unlawful user of a controlled substance.” This will help plenty of casual drug users, as well as people who the government can’t prove are anything but casual users.
2. They have also filed amicus briefs in the 3rd and 7th Circuit AWB/mag ban cases, calling such bans unconstitutional. Harmeet Dhillon participated in oral arguments in the 7th Circuit.
1. Their ongoing defense of the NFA.Update as of August 12, 2026: According to Rep. Clyde, DOJ will no longer defend the NFA’s registration requirements. Many questions to be answered, however, and it’s not clear currently if they will simply not seek a stay, or not appeal at all.
2. They also defend other laws too like the Gun free School Zones Act, even as applied to those walking around their own front yard or only just slightly off of it.
3. No pardon/commutation (at least not yet) for guys likeAdamiak andHoover. This one is disappointing because President Trump has not been shy about issuing other pardons and commutations. Preposterous someone like George Santos gets released while Adamiak sits in jail.
September 4, 2026 update: Adamiak and some others have been pardoned. Hoover has not been yet, though.
4. Scope of relief issue. Relief should not be limited to only those who are members of the association at the time a lawsuit was filed, as the government now argues. That would break the whole point of associational standing and force us to do costly class actions instead. Fortunately, it seems DOJ has backed off of this extreme position, albeit with some pressure from the courts.
5. RushingHemaniand its bad facts to the front of the line of marijuana cases (though this one ended up working out for us with a great ruling from SCOTUS inHemani).
7. Benson betrayal: DOJ (Jeannine Pirro) files brief urging DC Court of Appeals to grant rehearing en banc. This is another one that seems to have ended up OK, thanks to the Third Circuit giving us a circuit split anyway. But it was still a needless error.
California’s state legislature employs some of the busiest and most creative anti-gun staffers in the world, who operate in an atmosphere of nearly complete permissiveness.
Whatever lunacy these well-schooled goons propose has an extremely high likelihood of becoming state law, especially if it targets guns or shaves a chunk off of the Second Amendment protections enjoyed by free people living in free states.
Want to buy a Glock?
Sorry, it’s not one of the handguns California’s “experts” approved for personal purchase.
Need an AR?
Sorry, all you can have is a bastardized amalgamation of AR parts that won’t accept mags or function like normal ARs do for normal people in normal states.
These well-paid legislative dullards are the reason why California’s anti-gun laws migrate east and become laws in other deep blue states.
Some of those laws have already been blocked by the courts (such as the default “no guns unless posted” law). Many of more of those laws are headed for the trash bin of history next spring when SCOTUS declares AR-15 bans are unconstitutional. I expect the restrictions on suppressors and Glocks will also fall within a year or two.
California gun owners still have a long path ahead to just get parity with nearby freer states. But there are more and more court case guiding the way. The big question is, “Will the ‘well-schooled goons’ described above ever be prosecuted?” That is probably the only thing that will completely stop them.
Russell Phagan has never met a shooting sport rule he didn’t want to push. From building out the Brutality match series with InRangeTV, to founding FAST (Firearms Action Shooting Trials) as its own standalone series, to his day job as Director of KE Arms, he’s spent two decades finding the edge of what a “practical” gun match can look like — and now he’s found a new one. FAST’s newest division is Auto-Rifle: full-auto and forced-reset-trigger rifles, competing on the same stages as everyone else, for the first time in a mainstream two-gun series. The division debuts at FAST-ID in Parma, Idaho, this October, presented by X-Tech Tactical, with Red Right Hand sponsoring a dedicated Auto-Rifle stage where every competitor — regardless of division — gets to run a belt-fed gun. Russell returns to break down why FAST is willing to build rules around FRTs when most series won’t.
I had not thought of bending the criteria of my vision a little by calling a forced reset trigger a machine gun. It’s tempting but I think I will keep pushing for the real thing.
As it is within a one-day drive of my underground bunker I might attend some time to observe the format and think if something like that could be used or adapted in a high school competition.
When the ATF talks about a “new era of reform,” the language sounds modest: transparency, accountability, and partnership with the firearms industry. That framing comes straight from the agency, which says it is reducing unnecessary burdens on lawful businesses and gun owners while grounding its actions in clear statutory authority. According to ATF, the goal is a system that is more collaborative and less adversarial.
But the practical effect is much bigger than the branding suggests. In April 2026, DOJ and ATF announced 34 proposed and final rulemaking actions after a broad regulatory review ordered under President Donald Trump’s February 7, 2025 executive order on Second Amendment rights. California Attorney General Rob Bonta called that package the largest such rollout the agency had ever introduced at one time.
That matters because regulatory systems are rarely dismantled in one sweep. They are usually loosened piece by piece: an approval requirement here, a notice mandate there, a narrower definition in one section, a lighter paperwork standard in another. The cumulative result can be a very different enforcement landscape even when the underlying statutes remain on the books.
We spent fifty years fighting a gun registry. They built one anyway, and they didn’t need a single new law to do it.
There are now more than 120,000 automated license plate cameras across 5,000 American communities. They photograph every single vehicle that passes. Plate, time, location, and the stickers on your truck.
So nobody has to build a list of gun owners. They just search the gun store. The range. The gun show parking lot. The road home.
A registry only ever knew that you bought a gun. This knows how often you shoot, which range you shoot at, and whose truck was parked next to yours when you there.
They also violate my Jews in the Attic Test. And if you want to get some bipartisan support mention how they can be used to catch women who travel across state lines to get abortions.
I could see suppressed launchers for green-tip 5.56 becoming popular.
Our research shows firearm owners are more likely to adopt safe and secure storage practices when they can choose from a range of devices that meet their needs, such as biometric safes for quick access or cable locks for hunting rifles.
Remember, safe storage saves lives. Every gun, every time.
It used to be John Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions was fighting for more gun bans, carry restrictions, and more oppressive red-flag laws. It makes me smile to see their front line has been pushed back to wistful thinking of mandatory safe storage.
Because the right to carry is a federally recognized right, a state government cannot force someone to give up their right to keep and bear arms just because they crossed a state line. The Constitution doesn’t know state lines, and neither do our rights. Permits available on paper, but nearly impossible to maintain in practice, do not meet the clearly articulated demands of the Second Amendment. We are optimistic the Court will agree and fully restore the Second Amendment rights of non-residents who wish to travel and spend time in Massachusetts.
With the state’s motion to dismiss rejected, the case will now proceed through the federal court system for further arguments on the merits of the licensing requirements.
SAF is initiating the next skirmish against the forces of evil. I donate to them monthly and wish them well.
This is a not-insignificant reason we have generationally lost the war on guns on America. In the anti-police peak-woke era, many criminal justice reformers turned against gun control. That hasn’t really reversed in these circles.
Gun culture has fully won.
The argument of the NRA is gun control-libs are fools, because they don’t understand there’re many legitimate reasons why Americans have a right to own guns, without restrictions.
Once you have public defenders in progressive cities making the exact same argument, we’ve lost.
Jeremy Wilcox @jwilcox79 Posted on X August 29 here and here.
I would not say we have fully won. I would say that we are on the offense on all fronts and a win is ours for the taking. There are still lots of ways to lose if we get some really bad luck or we make a major error.
My biggest concern is pushing the Overton Window too fast and the pearl-clutchers are able to gain some traction with people who have not been moving forward with our progress.
We really need to get mainstream culture to move with our Overton Window. Take a newbie to the range. Bring up your recent gun competition experiences when someone at work asks about your weekend. Maybe consider wearing NRA, SAF, CCRKBA, JPFO (bumper sticker with “All in favor of gun control raise your right hand” with an image of Hitler), GOA (includes socks!), and/or FPC (some particularly bold and entertaining stuff), branded clothing, use a branded mug, or put their bumper stickers on your vehicle.
One could argue that other countries such as in Western Europe people get along just fine without ordinary people carrying guns. You might even be able to get away with saying that. But that is only because there several million victims of the Nazis who are not available to protest to that assertion.
I always understood why the Second Amendment was constitutionally protected.
What I never really understood was why people called it a natural right.
Then I moved from New York to Florida.
I didn’t own a gun yet.
One afternoon I was loading things into the trunk of my car outside a HomeGoods when a man approached me.
“Excuse me.”
He must have thought he’d startled me, because he immediately added, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to get close.”
I laughed.
“I’m a New Yorker. I’m used to close. How can I help you?”
He started telling me that he needed money for gas.
At some point while he was talking, I got into my car.
And sitting there, with the conversation still unfolding, I suddenly realized something:
He didn’t know whether I had a gun.
Not somewhere at home.
Not hypothetically.
For all he knew, I could have had one right there in the car, tucked under the steering wheel or within reach.
I didn’t.
But he couldn’t know that.
Schrödinger’s gun.
And in that instant, before I even knew whether his story was true, something changed in the space between us.
I thought about New York.
I thought about my friend who had been murdered in his own apartment during a burglary gone wrong.
Would those men have gone into his apartment if they had believed he might be armed?
I don’t know.
I thought about the time I was mugged at gunpoint, with a gun pressed against my temple.
Would that man have approached me with the same confidence if he had believed there was even a possibility that I could defend myself?
I don’t know that either.
But sitting there in that Florida parking lot, listening to this stranger talk, I suddenly understood deterrence in a way I never had before.
Not as military theory.
Not as constitutional law.
As something intimate.
My body. My life. The few feet between one person and another.
For years I had thought about guns primarily as objects: who had one, who shouldn’t have one, what laws should govern them.
Suddenly I understood the question from the other direction.
What changes when another person cannot simply assume that I am defenseless?
I felt taller.
Not because I had a gun.
I didn’t.
But because, for the first time, I understood that someone approaching me could not automatically assume that being physically stronger meant having power over me.
There was uncertainty.
There was a boundary around my body that had to be taken seriously.
Then his story began to fall apart.
I told him I didn’t have cash, but offered to help another way. I could put some gas in his car.
He took off.
So apparently, yes, it was a scam.
But by then I had already understood something much larger than the scam.
The phrase natural right finally made sense to me.
The Constitution had not given me ownership of my body.
It had not given me my life.
It had not invented my right to protect either one.
Those things came first.
What I understood that afternoon was the thing underneath them.
I had once been completely helpless while another human being held a gun against my temple.
Years later, without a gun in my possession at all, I understood what it meant for the person approaching me not to know whether I was helpless.
That uncertainty changed the space between us.
And that was the moment I finally understood the natural right behind the Second Amendment:
My life is mine, and the right to defend it has to exist before anyone gives me permission to do so.
Cooling-off periods infringe on the Second Amendment by preventing the lawful acquisition of firearms. 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. In this preliminary posture, we conclude that New Mexico’s Waiting Period Act is likely an unconstitutional burden on the Second Amendment rights of its citizens. We also conclude the other preliminary injunction factors are met and that Plaintiffs are entitled to an injunction.
