Category: A Victory!
Chiricahua Apache prisoners including Geronimo (front row, third from right). National Archives
In the wake of the 2022 NYSRPA v Bruen decision, gun control laws at all levels in the United States have been in danger. While the original case only applied to “may issue” concealed carry laws, the case opened the door to lawsuits of all kinds by changing the standard by which infringements are to be measured. Instead of being able to hand-wave our constitutionally-protected rights away with interest balancing (“We really, really, really need this law!”), states would instead have to show that an anti-gun law would have been tolerable at the time the Second Amendment was ratified.
The only way to prove this is to look at the history and find not only precedent, but also find that the precedent was overwhelmingly common. One state passing a law, or a few states having a law isn’t really enough. For an anti-gun law to stand, it would have needed to be common practice during the founding era.
Obviously, anti-gun forces aren’t going to give up. Instead of being like, “Damn. You got me. This law is unconstitutional,” we instead see them trying all kinds of crazy things to come up with historical precedent to justify today’s anti-gun laws. In a recent New Mexico case, a federal judge tried again to use laws against slaves owning firearms and laws against Native Americans owning guns to justify it.
In short, their argument is that these laws decided who could get a weapon. So, the thinking goes, a state can now decide who can own a weapon, even if very different criteria are used to make that choice.
Why This Argument Doesn’t Hold Water
One very important thing changed since the time of those bigoted and evil laws: the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments.
While simply calling a law bigoted and even genocidal doesn’t automatically render it unconstitutional, it’s pretty clear that a law banning black people and Native Americans wouldn’t be constitutional today. Why? Because the Civil War marked the beginning of the end of that nonsense. Constitutional amendments ended slavery and ended treating anyone as a second-class citizen.
This didn’t become the reality on the ground overnight, though. Slavery ended, but a decades-long insurgency ultimately succeeded in ending Reconstruction. This enabled the South to bring milder forms of slavery back via Jim Crow. Native Americans were denied the rights of citizens both during and after the Indian Wars. But, during the 20th Century, governments and courts decided to start following the law and put an end to unconstitutional persecution of these classes of people. Now, things like Jim Crow and treating Native Americans as foreigners with no rights are in the garbage can of history where they belong.
Given that these laws banning these two classes of people from owning weapons wouldn’t be constitutional today, there’s really no sense in relying on them to support infringements on other people. To claim otherwise is to claim that black people and Native Americans could be rightly denied their rights today.
Really, though, the judge who wrote this decision and the other anti-gun lawyers who originally crafted this dumb argument aren’t bigots themselves. They know this is a nonsense argument that won’t prove durable in higher courts. All they’re trying to do is come up with something that looks semi-legitimate to slow the process down in hopes that Democrats can change the composition of the Supreme Court and undo NYSRPA v Bruen, as well as to make a mockery of the Bruen decision in the process.
We shouldn’t let them off the hook, though. Disingenuously using the bigoted past to support their agenda in the present doesn’t make them good guys. If anything, this should be seen as a spit in the face and a mockery of the people who fought so hard to end slavery and the abuse of Native Americans. For this, they should still be ashamed.
In with a rat-tat-tat, out with barely a whimper. That describes the great lawsuit filed by Chicago not even four months ago. The suit, originally filed in state court was transferred to federal court. And with a very short, two sentence filing, Chicago voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit from federal court.
CWB Chicago, as usual, reported on Chicago eating some humble pie.
CHICAGO — When Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced in March that his administration was filing a “first-of-its-kind lawsuit” against firearm manufacturer Glock, the city drummed up publicity with a press release and widespread media coverage.
There was no press release and no media coverage on Monday when the city’s attorneys unceremoniously dropped the case in a two-sentence federal court filing.
Chicago and its top-shelf lawyer buddies over at Everytown for Gun Control hailed it as a “first of a kind” lawsuit claiming that Glock pistols posed a public nuisance because criminals misuse them. The announcement back on March 19, 2024, attracted all sorts of national headlines happily parroting Chicago’s sensational claims.
Moreover, the usual menagerie of gun control advocates cheered the fake news. “Good job, Mr. Mayor,” the ever-shrinking Chicago Tribune editorialized at the move.
Here it is, from Chicago Mayor Let’s Go Brandon’s mouth press room:
CHICAGO – Today, the City of Chicago announced a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against Glock, the manufacturer of the most popular handguns in the United States, alleging that Glock is facilitating the proliferation of illegal machine guns on the streets of Chicago. The lawsuit alleges that Glock unreasonably endangers Chicagoans by manufacturing and selling in the Chicago civilian market semiautomatic pistols that can easily be converted to illegal machine guns with an auto sear – a cheap, small device commonly known as a “Glock switch.” The suit is the first to use Illinois’s new Firearms Industry Responsibility Act, passed and signed into law in 2023 to hold gun companies accountable for conduct that endangers the public.
Filed earlier today in Cook County Circuit Court, the lawsuit reports that law enforcement personnel in Chicago have recovered over 1,100 Glocks that have been converted into illegal machine guns in the last two years alone in connection with a wide variety of crimes, including homicides, aggravated assaults, batteries, kidnappings, burglaries, home invasions, carjackings, and attempted robberies. The lawsuit alleges that Glock knows it could fix the problem but refuses to do so, and the City is seeking a court order requiring Glock to cease sales of its easily converted pistols to Chicago civilians. The City also seeks penalties against Glock and damages for the harm that Glock has caused to the City.
“The City of Chicago is encountering a deadly new frontier in the gun violence plaguing our communities because of the increase of fully automatic Glocks on our streets,” said Mayor Brandon Johnson, a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “Selling firearms that can so easily be converted into automatic weapons makes heinous acts even more deadly, so we are doing everything we can in collaboration with others committed to ending gun violence to hold Glock accountable for putting profits over public safety.”
“Right now, anyone in the United States with $20 and a screwdriver can convert their Glock pistol into an illegal machine gun in just a few minutes,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law.“We intend to hold Glock accountable for the unconscionable decision to continue selling its easily modified pistols even though it could fix the problem, knowing that by refusing to do so it is exacerbating gun violence in Chicago.”
“We are proud to partner with the City of Chicago and Everytown Law in this vital effort to enhance public safety and create a safer Chicago for all its residents,” said H. Christopher Boehning, partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.
Yes, Everytown’s Law division website literally couldn’t contain their glee in the filing.
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The page, still up as of July 24, 2024, shows a screaming headline that won’t even fit on at the top of their page.
In with a rat tat tat, out with barely a whimper
In recent days, in a move barely mentioned (if at all) in most of those same media outlets, Chicago dropped their lawsuit. In fact, the great ground-breaking lawsuit, filed with the help of the very best legal minds (cough) over at Everytown, was withdrawn in a two sentence filing.
In reality, the lawsuit filed in March of this year proved nothing new. It was just another poorly rehashed lawfare action against a respected firearm manufacturer that produces some of the most popular defensive handguns sold in America and elsewhere in the world.
Glock products have saved countless lives when used in self-defense and to put down violent criminals, terrorists and lunatics. They have also thwarted millions of criminal attacks.
But Chicago politicians needed to do something to distract from their feckless leadership and the failure of gun control schemes to stop criminals. After all, gun control disarms victims, not criminals. And when the victims are unarmed and defenseless, the criminals can ply their trade with impunity, particularly when prosecutors don’t prosecute and judges don’t incarcerate offenders.
Right along those lines, the same legal beagles re-filed the the withdrawn case once more in state court, only this time they’ve added a couple of Glock authorized gun shops as defendants. Yes, Eagle Sports and Midwest Sporting Goods now get to spend tens of thousands of dollars defending against a defective lawsuit. At least until Brandon’s legal team files another two sentence voluntary dismissal.
Does anyone want to take a bet that this latest filing will meet the same end, perhaps even sooner than the original filings?
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With the help of Gun Owners of America (GOA) and its members in Pennsylvania, lawmakers in the Keystone State have axed several aspects of Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro’s gun control schemes from the state budget.
According to a GOA alert sent to members in Pennsylvania, three of the most egregious line items were removed. That means no funding for the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) to increase social media spying on gun owners, no funding for the PSP to harass lawful firearms retailers and no funding for Shapiro’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
“All three have been successfully axed from Pennsylvania’s 2024-2025 budget,” the alert stated. “GOA would especially like to thank Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman for his efforts in successfully negotiating these items out of the budget.”
Republican State Sen. Doug Mastriano fought the measures in the state Senate and during the appropriations process. He credited GOA with the legislature’s success in killing the funding.
“Looks like we succeeded in weeding out any infringements on 2A in the budget,” Mastriano said in a text to the organization. “Thank you for drawing attention to it. Can’t do this without you and GOA.”
The Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which would mirror President Joe Biden’s White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention is particularly problematic. One of the main problems with these taxpayer-funded bureaucracies is that membership is stacked to arrive at a predetermined outcome and use state resources to perpetuate their narrative.
However, GOA is warning its members that Shapiro is likely to proceed with that scheme despite them not being funded by the legislature.
“The fight is far from over,” the organization wrote in the alert. “Governor Shapiro has promised to set up the Office of Gun Violence Prevention anyway, without legislative authority or appropriation. This office will be nothing more than a propaganda machine to justify more calls for gun control. Shapiro has gone rogue before, writing an opinion to ban 80% lowers when he was Attorney General of Pennsylvania.”
The Office of Gun Violence Prevention was part of a proposed $100 million Gov. Shapiro had requested for funding “gun violence prevention” in the commonwealth over the next year, all of which were strongly supported by various gun-ban organizations. $1 million from that prop0sal would have gone to create the office within the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD).
This was not the first win for Pennsylvania gun owners in the past few months. In late April, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania ruled that the state law forbidding adults under 21 from applying for a carry permit is unconstitutional, as is the law banning adults 18- to 20-years old from open carrying during an emergency.
