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.
Considering much of the justification for restricting the Second Amendment comes down to preventing violence, this distinction is strange.
The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s protections has expanded over the years. It’s almost impossible for a public person to win a defamation or libel lawsuit, since the Supreme Court ruled in the 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan that the plaintiff must prove “actual malice,” which means knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard.
Commercial speech used to be unprotected. Now, it receives intermediate scrutiny after SCOTUS’ 1980 ruling in Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission. Hate speech, flag burning, violent video games and lies about military honors are all protected now.
If the Supreme Court applied strict scrutiny to firearms regulations, they would fail due to the lack of historical tradition. Requiring a minimum age of 21 to own a firearm would fail, since 18–20-year-olds served in the 1791 militia. Red flag laws would fail, since there are no pre-deprivation hearings. Magazine limits would fail since there is no founding-era analogue. Many felons are nonviolent, so laws prohibiting their possession would fail as too broad.
Judges justify the hypocrisy by pointing to the need to prevent gun deaths. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 44,400 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S. last year. However, when compared to a similar country, England (and Wales), which bans firearms, the U.S. has lower overall violent crime rates. This reveals that judges are making decisions based on emotion, not relying on a purely constitutional analysis.
There are other options. It is possible, even probable, that it is not an emotional basis for the decisions. It could be there are “just” different principles at work. A disarmed population is a compliant population. Political power grows from the barrel of a gun, etc.
In his role as Deputy Director, we have worked closely with Robert Cekada to ensure law-abiding gun owners have a seat at the table in shaping policy.
If confirmed, he would be the first ever truly pro-Second Amendment nominee to head the agency. By nominating an ATF Director who understands our community and respects our constitutional rights, President Trump and his administration are further underscoring their commitment to standing up for the Second Amendment and gun owners. We urge the Senate to confirm him without delay.
Unless they can privatize the ATF and make it into a chain of convivence stores, I can’t consider anyone nominated to head the ATF to be “truly pro-Second Amendment.”
The police don’t have the power to protect you now either. They only have the power to investigate and potentially arrest people after a crime has been committed.
Objection! Presumes facts not in evidence.
The post presumes private citizens who carry concealed guns are all criminals. The evidence is that people with concealed carry licenses are far less likely to commit a crime than even police officers.
Objection! Presumes facts not in evidence.
Allowing people to carry the most effective self-defense tools available increases public safety. It is only a dangerous agenda for violent criminals.
While many Americans still believe the courts are the key to restoring liberty, gun rights leaders say it’s time for a reality check — because the courts aren’t coming to save you. That’s the blunt warning from Hannah Hill, Vice President of the National Foundation for Gun Rights, who says far too many liberty activists have fallen into the trap of thinking they can sue their way back to freedom.
“No. The courts are NOT coming to save you,” Hill said in a recent statement. “If you’re waiting for a judge to fix this country, you’re going to be waiting forever.”
According to Hill, too many well-meaning conservatives are convinced that “one big lawsuit” will topple gun control laws or fix deep-rooted corruption, when in reality, the legal system is stacked against liberty from top to bottom.
I have been saying just the opposite for quite a while now. The legislatures in so many states are completely hopeless. I think the courts and/or prosecutions are the only hope in those gun-rights hellholes. If we can maintain an originalist majority on the SCOTUS long enough, we can get most of the bad laws removed from the books. Once the bad laws are off the books we can create a history of life without oppressive gun laws. The more history we can create the better our chances for a non-oppressive gun law future.
The risk is losing the majority on SCOTUS via the anti-gun politicians packing the court in the next five to ten years.
That said, having all the bad law the Federal level is plausible even without the support of SCOTUS. And if we can get rid of all the bad laws at the Federal level and in half or more the states then we have additional leverage for the remaining states.
I see the point of the article, and I am not entirely in disagreement with them. And redundancy in protection and plans are always a good thing. If we can get both the courts and the legislatures to see the plain and clear language of the 2nd Amendment that would be great. It would be much better than having just one or the other. So, both right?
The problem is that resources are limited and must be allocated to best accomplish the final goal. With the current SCOTUS I believe the path forward is more certain and less resource intensive than attempting to make similar progress in the legislatures. Hence, I’m going to be expending my resources on the courts for now. But I’m certainly not going to fault someone who can make a difference at the legislative front.
Despite his website promising “compassionate leadership for a just future,” Smeltzer vowed in a recent post to “round up EVER [sic] SINGLE red hat wearing MAGA and put them in hard labor camps for the rest of their lives.”
While locking up those with whom he disagrees appears to be one of his key objectives, Smeltzer told the Washington Free Beacon that he is running a “health care and tax-the-rich campaign” and would use a role in Congress to advocate for his fellow “furry” fetishists.
He certainly has the attitude I would expect from a socialist. The compassion part may not seem obvious in the current context. But if he really thinks all “red hat wearing MAGA” should be lined up in front of a ditch to be shot, then I suppose hard labor for life could be considered compassionate.
This is why we have the Second Amendment. This is why I created Boomershoot.
I wish this were not true. But it has been true for decades. I remember one of my daughters bringing home a paper from college when she was going to the University of Idaho. I recall it being from a set of papers assigned by an economics professor. The students were to report on the errors they found in them. The paper was about some set of people in South America having freedom forced on them and how bad it was.
How do you argue with someone like this? How can you even have a conversation? We do not even share the definitions of words. Is there even a common basis for communication? Is it some sort of alternate reality?
My message is, I can see in my mind’s eye those rows and rows of white stones and all the hundreds of my friends who gave their lives, for what? The country of today?
“No, I’m sorry, but the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result of what it is now.
…
What we fought for was our freedom, but now it’s a darn sight worse than when I fought for it.
He is talking about the U.K. I cannot help but conclude this means people must be thinking their government of today is tyrannical. With the surveillance society, restrictions on free speech, firearms ownership, and even knife ownership I can see how a strong case can be made for that.
The actual figure really is innately unknowable. You can legally build an AR-15 rifle at home with a wee bit of mechanical skill and a router. However, for the sake of discussion, let’s pin that number at 30 million.
A fixed-stock AR-15 is 39 inches long. An M4 carbine with a 16-inch barrel is 33 inches long with the stock collapsed. Let’s therefore establish an average length for an AR-15 as 36 inches. If the typical “assault weapon,” whatever that truly is, spans 36 inches and you arrayed every one of them muzzle to butt, that line of guns would stretch from Boston to Los Angeles 6.5 times. That’s 17,045 miles’ worth of weapons. Starting to appreciate the scope of this thing?
There are around 400 million firearms in the U.S. A Glock 19 is 7.3 inches long. That M4 was 33. Some pistols are shorter. Some rifles are longer. Let’s just guess that they average around 20 inches across the board. Place every gun in America end-to-end, and now you have an unbroken line of weapons that will circle the globe five times.
There are 77 million lawful gun owners in the U.S. That’s 2.5 times as many Americans packing heat as there are soldiers on Planet Earth. We are some seriously well-armed rednecks.
After the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, the Australian government outlawed most guns, confiscating some 650,000 firearms. Gun control enthusiasts often look lustfully at our friends Down Under as role models. Even in a slow year, we gun-crazy Yanks buy that many new firearms every two weeks.
Although the numbers above might seem definitive to gun owners, I’m not so sure it will have the desired effect on anti-gun people. I have often said gun grabbers don’t even understand arithmetic and some don’t even understand numbers. And with that blindness they may just double down. They may view this as all the more justification in saying, “There are too many guns on the streets.”
You have a mayor who hates guns. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t have any handguns in the District of Columbia. I swear to protect the Constitution and what the courts say, but I will do it in the most restrictive way as possible.
“The media couldn’t blame Kirk’s murder on a so-called ‘assault rifle,’ so they’re doing the next worst thing,” he added. “They’ve slapped a defamatory label on commonly-owned hunting rifles, hoping to make them the new bogeyman for the gun ban lobby. The Daily Mail has pulled a page out of the gun control playbook simply for the purpose of sensationalism. It doesn’t pass the smell test.
* Via Grok: No, it would not be accurate to say the bullet hit him in his throat.
The precise point of impact was the right side of his neck, specifically in the lateral cervical region (near the sternocleidomastoid muscle, approximately at the level of C5–C6 vertebrae). Medically and forensically:
The throat refers to the anterior neck (front), including the larynx, trachea, and thyroid area.
The neck is broader, encompassing anterior, lateral, and posterior regions.
The bullet entered the right lateral neck, not the anterior throat. It traversed obliquely leftward and downward, damaging the right carotid sheath and spinal structures before lodging near T1 on the left side—never entering the throat proper.
Saying “throat” would be anatomically incorrect and could mislead, especially given conspiracy claims misidentifying blood from internal vascular rupture as an anterior wound. Official autopsy diagrams and surgical reports consistently label the entry as right posterolateral neck.
** Via Grok: The rifle in this case was grandfather’s hunting rifle, modified with a shortened barrel and basic scope—functional for a 200-yard shot, but far from a modern sniper system.
…
Bottom line: Calling it a “high-powered sniper rifle” is inaccurate and inflammatory—it was a vintage bolt-action hunting rifle, effectively used but not technically either “sniper” or “high-powered” in the modern sense.
Today’s topic addresses a pet peeve, which is how every single time some human-shaped monster attacks a school in America, the resulting commentary heavily features the line: “This never happens anywhere else!!” Really? Nowhere else? In no other country, in the entire world.
…
But here’s the linguistic game they play. Any time an incident involves a gun, it’s no longer a massacre. It’s a shooting. I insist on pushing back with that one. Of course they can say “it never happens elsewhere” if they make sure that it exclusively refers to only one specific type of massacre.
As for the argument that it makes the killing easier, therefore there will be more killings — that presumes some population of people who are a hair’s trigger away from killing everyone they see, but only stopped by the fact that they don’t have an “easy” way to do it. No, I argue that the important part is the line between “peace” and “killing”, and that once someone crosses that line, the weapon matters little.
She gives several examples, including her childhood in China, which disprove the assertion that “This never happens anywhere else!!” And, more importantly she offers some suggestions to deal with the fact, “Human beings are NOT SANE as a general rule and sometimes insanity leads to serious problems.”
