A critical ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit has saved the state of Ohio’s firearm preemption law.
Like many states, Ohio has a law on the books barring municipalities from passing gun laws more restrictive than those that the state has instituted. Such laws are designed to alleviate the pitfall of a gun owners trying to navigate and patchwork of different gun restrictions every time they cross into a different city.
In 2007, Ohio enacted a preemption law prohibiting municipal ordinances from infringing on Ohioans’ rights to “own, possess, purchase, sell, transfer, transport, store, or keep any firearm, part of a firearm, its components, and its ammunition.” The law additionally awards “costs and reasonable attorney fees” to anyone “that prevails in a challenge” to an ordinance that violates the preemption law.
As a little background on the issue, twice—in 2018 and again in 2020—Ohio lawmakers expanded the law to forbid more regulations and to also apply to knives. Since 2010, the state has fought for the law in the courtroom, winning some and losing some.
In 2010, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the original 2007 law in a lawsuit where the city of Cleveland had challenged the statute claiming that it infringed on the city’s municipal home rule authority. Later, Cincinnati filed a similar lawsuit, challenging the 2018 and 2022 amendments, that also argued the law violated free speech and separation of powers.
In City of Cincinnati v. Ohio, the trial court originally ruled in favor of Cincinnati and preliminarily enjoined the 2018 and 2020 amendments. However, when the state appealed the case to the 1st Circuit, that court held that under the 2010 Cleveland case the 2018 and 2020 amendments do not violate the state’s constitutions.
In the ruling, the court stated: “Amended R.C. 9.68 survives this constitutional challenge primarily because the Supreme Court of Ohio largely foreclosed the City’s arguments against it in its decision upholding Original R.C. 9.68 against substantially similar claims.
To the extent the 2018 and 2022 amendments to the law may have altered its preemptive effects and expanded the liability of political subdivisions that act in conflict with it, the City has not proven by clear and convincing evidence that those amendments change the constitutional calculus forged by City of Cleveland (2010). We therefore sustain the state’s sole assignment of error and reverse the trial court’s judgment preliminarily enjoining Amended R.C. 9.68.”
The case has been remanded back to the trial court for further proceedings.
BELLEVUE, WA – Following Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy’s push for more gun control under the guise of declaring “gun violence” a “public health crisis,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms announced its support for the proposed Protecting the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Act, sponsored by U.S. Senator Mike Braun (R-IN).
Sen. Braun’s legislation is co-sponsored by Senators Thom Tillis, Kevin Cramer, Jim Risch, Mike Crapo, Cynthia Lummis, Joni Ernst, Cindy Hyde-Smith, John Hoeven, Steve Daines, Ted Budd, Roger Wicker, Rick Scott, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, John Thune, Mike Rounds, Joni Ernst, Markwayne Mullin, Ted Cruz, and JD Vance.
“Dr. Murthy’s declaration earlier this week was an outrage,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “He has joined other Biden administration officials who have weaponized their positions and agencies against the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. His contention that gun-related violent crime is a public health issue is nothing more than a scam to push Joe Biden’s extremist gun control agenda.
“In addition, we’re delighted that Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) has announced she will work to strip power from the Department of Health and Human Services,” he continued, “and cut all funding for bureaucrats who are using their positions to erode our Constitutional rights.”
Gottlieb reiterated his earlier condemnation of Murthy’s declaration, noting, “Violent crime is not a disease, it’s a symptom of failed leadership, starting with Joe Biden and going all the way down through his administration.”
“From the moment Joe Biden stepped into the Oval office,” Gottlieb said, “he has used government officials and agencies to advance his gun ban agenda. The Surgeon General’s announcement this week is just the latest manifestation of this effort. Murthy even admitted this is the first time in history a Surgeon General has issued an advisory calling gun-related violence a public health issue, and it ought to be the last. Violent crime is a law enforcement issue, period. Dr. Murthy should stick to fighting flu bugs and stay away from firearms.”
Pew Research Service released a Cultural Issues and the 2024 Election report that shows there’s a stark difference in the way those who support more gun control and those who support gun rights see the issue of lawful gun ownership in America and what it means for the 2024 election.
Pew Research Service surveyed 8,709 adults, including 1,166 registered voters, in April on the political values of both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. The survey topics were grouped together as “culture war” or “woke” issues.
Unsurprisingly, supporters of Biden and Trump view guns from nearly polar opposite perspectives. But the data is telling on what voters would expect from another four years of a Biden administration.
Voter Insights
PEW Research Center
“By overwhelming margins, Joe Biden’s supporters prioritize gun control over gun rights and say gun ownership does more to reduce than increase safety; roughly eight-in-ten Biden supporters (83%) say the increase in guns in the U.S. is at least somewhat bad for society,” the report’s authors wrote in the “Gun attitudes and the 2024 election” section. “By comparable or even somewhat larger margins, Donald Trump’s supporters express opposing views on all three measures.”
That’s not telling the whole story, though. The survey found that among all voters, there was a slight edge, 52 percent, to those voters who believed it is important to protect the rights of Americans who own guns over those who believe there should be increased control over who owns guns, which came in at 47 percent. The stark differences show when the two groups of supporters are broken out.
Biden supporters only accounted for 19 percent who believe protecting Second Amendment rights is important compared to 80 percent who want more gun control. Among Trump supporters, 85 percent want Second Amendment rights protected and just 14 percent want more gun control.
That divide was also evident when surveyors asked if gun ownership increases or decreases public safety. Fifty-four percent of survey respondents believe gun ownership contributes to increased public safety, while 45 percent said more gun ownership reduces public safety.
Seventy-six percent of Biden supporters believe more guns decreases public safety while 23 percent believe lawful gun ownership makes communities safer. Among Trump supporters, just 13 percent thought more gun ownership makes society more vulnerable, while 86 percent believe more lawfully-owned firearms means safer communities.
When the overarching question of whether more guns are good or bad for society, 52 percent of survey respondents thought it was bad, with just 22 percent agreeing it was good. Among Biden supporters, 83 percent think guns are bad for society with just 5 percent agreeing guns are good. For Trump supporters, 40 percent agree more guns were good for America with just 21 percent who thought more guns are bad.
Digging Deeper
That last set of survey results comes with a caveat, though. There were significant numbers of voters surveyed who answered guns are neither good nor bad. That’s not an anomaly, as many gun owners see firearms as an inanimate tool with no intrinsic moral value one way or the other. In other words, it’s not the gun that’s bad or good, rather it’s the person who uses it for good or evil.
Among all survey respondents, that was 25 percent, and if added to those who answered more lawfully-owned guns are good for America, that brings the total to 47 percent of respondents. Thirteen percent of Biden supporters thought guns were neutral, and if added to those who thought more lawfully-owned guns are good, that total is 18 percent. Thirty-eight percent of Trump supporters are also neutral on the good-or-bad question. Adding those to the “guns are good” answers, that brings the total to 78 percent.
That question, though, didn’t differentiate between lawful and unlawful gun ownership. The survey, though, did ask about crime and policing. A full 61 percent of those polled said the justice system should be tougher on criminals, with only 25 percent saying the justice system is getting it right and 13 percent saying it is too tough on criminals.
When it comes to Biden’s supporters, 40 percent agree that the justice system needs to get tougher with criminals. Among Trump supporters, that figure jumps to 81 percent.
Crime is an issue. Given the results of whether guns contribute to or denigrate America, along with the crime answers, it is clear that Americans overall are fed up with criminals being treated softly while their rights to protect themselves with guns are winnowed away to satisfy special interest gun control proponents.
More of This? Voter Survey Says No
The hardened positions by Biden and Trump supporters are hardly surprising. After all, President Biden has been demonizing the firearm industry since he took to the debate stage in 2019 and called firearm manufacturers “the enemy.” He nominated David Chipman, a former gun control lobbyists to become Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), before the U.S. Senate confirmation hearing forced President Biden to withdraw his name from consideration. He’s installed a former Everytown for Gun Safety gun control lobbyist in The White House. President Biden has used a whole-of-government approach to attack the firearm industry and Second Amendment rights, through “zero-tolerance” policies by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to revoke or pressure firearm retailers to give up their licenses and livelihoods, using the ATF to abuse the rulemaking process to bypass Congress by reclassifying brace-equipped pistols as short-barreled rifles (SBRs) and subject them to regulation under the National Firearms Act (NFA), or the “Engaged in theBusiness” rule to implement near-universal background checks among private sellers. This is the same White House administration that illegally spied, and lied about it, on law-abiding gun owners by collecting their private banking data without a warrant and also weaponized the Commerce Department to push an industry-crippling rule to hobble firearm exports to overseas markets.
Contrast that with President Trump, who told gun owners at NRA’s Annual Meeting, “I promise you this, with me at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, no one will lay a finger on your firearms — just as took place for four years when I was your president.”
The Pew Research Service survey’s slight edge in favor of gun rights suggest the Biden administration’s support for gun control and nonstop attack on the Second Amendment is shifting the political ground toward valuing gun rights, and potentially, for President Trump. NSSF just reported that 22.3 million people – equal to population of Florida – have become first-time gun owners since 2020. Those new gun owners don’t fit the convenient boxes that gun control supporters would like. These new owners are increasingly diverse, including African Americans and Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans, as well as more women. For these new gun owners, gun rights is now an election issue.
November’s elections are about five months away. While that may be an eternity in politics, voting in many states starts in September. Gun owners will soon make their decisions. President Biden’s supporters will be looking to double down on the attacks on the firearm industry. President Trump’s supporters will be looking to reverse these unprecedented attacks both the firearm industry and Second Amendment rights. That’s why it is imperative to #GUNVOTE®. Learn how to get registered and when and where to vote. Don’t Risk Your Rights.
The court determined, correctly, that the ATF doesn’t have the authority to just make up or alter definitions of firearms in order to ban items.
For those of you who don’t know, a bump stock works by using the natural recoil of the weapon to push the trigger back into the finger to fire again. It’s still semi-automatic, which is why the court ruled against the ATF.
The Supreme Court struck down a ban on bump stocks. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images)
Gun control group cooked for dumb tweet about bump stocks.
Now, Giffords – founded by shooting survivor Gabby Giffords, wants the cheap pieces of plastic banned, once again, but didn’t bother looking up what a bump stock looks like.
The gun control group shared a photo on X of a regular telescopic stock demanding people sign a petition to urge congress to ban them.
Naturally, people weren’t exactly eager to let this little mistake go unnoticed. People had plenty to say, and dragged Giffords for the mistake, leaving it up and turning off the comments.
As I’ve said before, there might not be a dumber and more ignorant collective group of people in America than the anti-gun crowd.
They literally don’t even know what they want to ban. How do you not know what you’re trying to ban? These are the same people who think an AR-15 is some kind of ultra-powerful rifle, when in reality, common 5.56 ammo fires a 62 grain bullet.
Yet, here we are with Giffords talking about something they don’t know anything about, and the organization wants us to take it seriously.
Giffords torched over stupid bump stocks tweet. (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
What do you think of Giffords making the dumb mistake and leaving it up? Let me know at David.Hookstead@outkick.com.
FILE – State Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine, listens as lawmakers discuss a bill before the Senate at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., July 10, 2023. A federal appeals court on Tuesday, June 11, 2024, upheld California's ban on gun shows at county fairs and other public properties, deciding the laws do not violate the rights of firearm sellers or buyers. The two measures were both written by Min. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
SOURCE: Rich Pedroncelli
SAN FRANCISCO —
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld California’s ban on gun shows at county fairs and other public properties, deciding the laws do not violate the rights of firearm sellers or buyers.
The 3-0 decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturns a federal judge’s ruling in October that blocked the laws.
The two measures were both written by Democratic state Sen. Dave Min. The first, which went into effect in January 2022, barred gun shows at the Orange County Fair, and the other, which took effect last year, extended the ban to county fairgrounds on state-owned land.
In his decision last fall, U.S. District Judge Mark Holcomb wrote that the state was violating the rights of sellers and would-be buyers by prohibiting transactions for firearms that can be bought at any gun shop. He said lawful gun sales involve commercial speech protected by the First Amendment.
But the appeals court decided the laws prohibit only sales agreements on public property — not discussions, advertisements or other speech about firearms. The bans “do not directly or inevitably restrict any expressive activity,” Judge Richard Clifton wrote in Tuesday’s ruling.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who defended the laws in court, hailed the decision.
“Guns should not be sold on property owned by the state, it is that simple,” Bonta said in a statement. “This is another victory in the battle against gun violence in our state and country.”
Gun shows attract thousands of prospective buyers to local fairgrounds. Under a separate state law, not challenged in the case, actual purchase of a firearm at a gun show is completed at a licensed gun store after a 10-day waiting period and a background check, Clifton noted.
Gun-control groups have maintained the shows pose dangers, making the weapons attractive to children and enabling “straw purchases” for people ineligible to possess firearms.
The suit was filed by a gun show company, B&L Productions, which also argued that the ban on fairgrounds sales violated the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. The appeals court disagreed, noting that there were six licensed firearms dealers in the same ZIP code as the Orange County Fairgrounds, the subject of Min’s 2022 law.
Min said the restoration of the laws will make Californians safer.
“I hope that in my lifetime, we will return to being a society where people’s lives are valued more than guns, and where gun violence incidents are rare and shocking rather than commonplace as they are today,” Min said in a statement Tuesday.
The ruling will be appealed, said attorney Chuck Michel, president of the California Rifle & Pistol Association, the state affiliate of the National Rifle Association.
“CRPA will continue to protect the despised gun culture and fight back against an overreaching government that seeks to limit disfavored fundamental rights and discriminate against certain groups of people on state property,” Michel said in a statement provided to the San Francisco Chronicle.
In a 6-3 decision on Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that semiautomatic rifles with bump stocks aren’t machine guns.
The court said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) overstepped by classifying them as such. The case, Garland v. Cargill, represents a huge win for the 2A community.
Alan M. Gottlieb, the founder and Executive Vice President of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), praised the decision.
“This is a significant victory for gun owners because it reminds the ATF it simply cannot rewrite federal law,” said Gottlieb. “The agency has just been reminded that it can only enforce the law, not usurp the authority of Congress.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, clarified:
We hold that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is not a ‘machinegun’ because it cannot fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger.’ And, even if it could, it would not do so ‘automatically.’ ATF therefore exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies bump stocks as machineguns.
The ruling highlighted that for many years, the ATF didn’t consider bump stocks to make rifles machine guns.
This stance changed after the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, leading the ATF to demand bump stock owners surrender or destroy their devices within 90 days.
SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut, who challenged the ATF’s rule in 2018, said, “ATF exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a rule that was logically inconsistent with the plain text of the statute and cut into the prerogative of Congress.”
“As the executive branch has continued to use ATF to implement its will and circumvent congressional authority, we are optimistic that today’s decision will send a message that such actions will not be tolerated and that the courts will strike down more regulations inconsistent with the law as Congress wrote,” he continued.
Meanwhile, Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun-control organization funded by Michael Bloomberg, was irate with the ruling.
“Guns outfitted with bump stocks fire like machine guns, they kill like machine guns, and they should be banned like machine guns — but the Supreme Court just decided to put these deadly devices back on the market,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown.
“We urge Congress to right this wrong and pass bipartisan legislation banning bump stocks, which are accessories of war that have no place in our communities,” he added.
Well, there’s no doubt that anti-gun Democrats will move to ban bump stocks following SCOTUS’ decision. The question is whether they’ll have enough support across the aisle to make it law.
Further bolstering the case against the state of California for restricting gun purchases to one a month, the National Rifle Association has filed a brief with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal in the lawsuit challenging that law.
In the case Nguyen v. Bonta, plaintiffs argue that the law restricting firearm purchases to no more than one every 30 days is a violation of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. In March, a U.S. District Court ruled the law to be unconstitutional, but the state—never opposed to wasting citizens’ tax dollars—appealed the decision to the 9th Circuit Court.
In the brief, the NRA argues that the law violates the Second Amendment because the right to “keep and bear” arms includes the right to “acquire” firearms.
“This Court has twice held that the Second Amendment protects the right to acquire arms,” the brief stated. “This Court’s prior holdings are supported by Supreme Court precedent. First, the Supreme Court has determined that ‘keep Arms’ in the Amendment’s text means to ‘have weapons,’ and the plain meaning of ‘have’ encompasses the act of acquisition. Second, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that certain rights are implicit in enumerated guarantees. In the Second Amendment context, four Justices have recognized—and none have disagreed—that firearms training is ‘a necessary concomitant’ of the right to keep and bear arms. As this Court, the Third Circuit, and many district courts have recognized, acquiring a firearm must be a necessary concomitant as well.”
The brief further argues that multiple gun purchases per month were common in early America, and there were no historical limitations on the number of firearms that law-abiding citizens could purchase—a fact the government must prove under the new Bruen standard.
“The State argues that a more nuanced analogical approach is required because historically firearms were too laborious to manufacture and too expensive to purchase for firearms to be available for bulk purchase,” the brief stated. “In fact, firearms were ubiquitous in early America, and affordable enough for every militiaman and many women to be required to purchase one or several firearms. Indeed, newspaper advertisements regularly offered large quantities of firearms for sale.”
Further bolstering that point, the brief continued: “In any event, California does not merely prohibit “bulk” purchases; it prohibits the purchase of even two firearms in one month. Americans commonly purchased multiple firearms in a single transaction in the colonial and founding eras—and no law ever forbade it.” The brief also pointed out that the state “failed to provide a single historical law limiting how many firearms someone could purchase in a month. Nor did the State provide any founding era regulation.”
In the end, the brief calls for the circuit court to affirm the earlier district court ruling that the law is unconstitutional.
PEW Research Center
