Like every “mass shooting,” a recent gunfight in Sacramento initially received breathless coverage in the media. But as the sordid details about the suspects became known, coverage of the bloodshed tapered off.
Six people died. It became clear the reason was gang violence. One of the shooters was recently released early from prison – jailed for the felonious assault of his girlfriend – against the recommendation of the parole board. The man was previously convicted on gun charges, and was also awarded a settlement from the state for alleged poor treatment while behind bars.
While devastating – particularly to the families involved – the incident was not amenable to the left-wing/media narrative about guns.
[T]here are a number of underlying truths that they will dare not share with the public. Because if they do, it will become clear that they and their policies are not the solution. They are, in fact, the root of the problem.
These truths, he stated, shred the alleged need for “common sense” gun laws.
Here are the truths Craig highlighted that shatter leftist lies:
It’s a violence problem, and not just guns. “[O]nly recent generations… have concluded that violence is an acceptable way to address the myriad of issues confronting them. The firearm is not the cause of this. In fact, it is not even the weapon of choice.” Most crimes involve other kinds of weapons or none at all. “Guns are no more the cause of this violence,” he wrote, “than cars are the cause of drunk driving.”
Gun laws are not a crime deterrent. “A 2020 study done as a part of the RAND Corporation’s Gun Policy in America initiative” found “there is zero evidence that gun control laws have any effect on violence in general or gun violence specifically.”
“Soft on crime” policies are the cause of rising crime. Spiking violent crime in the 90s led to more money for police and harsher sentences for crooks in the form of things like mandatory minimums. This led to a 20-year decline in crime. “While the media and politicians deny the correlation and instead seek to blame guns; the increase in crime, especially violent crime, directly corresponds with the change in our criminal justice policies.”
Gun control is racial. From “black codes” to California’s “Mulford Act” to gun ownership bans targeting Native Americans and Asians, “[g]un control has always been about keeping “Those People” from being able to own firearms.”
Commenting further on how “the gun debate has always been rooted in racism” with “those who push these policies [being] the true victimizers, Craig explained:
We are often told that young black and brown men are disproportionately impacted by gun violence. But it is rarely noted that young black and brown men are disproportionately the ones pulling the trigger. The sad fact is that people who seek to victimize others (black, white, Latin, Asian, etc.) tend to go after people who look like them.
So, while it is noble to try and reduce the number of young black men in our criminal justice system, we cannot ignore that in doing so, we have put black men, women and children at risk of being their victims.
At the same time, we are limiting the ability of these very same folks to be able to defend themselves from the very danger we have put in their path.
“If we are to ever address the scourge of violence in our streets,” Craig wrote, “it will only happen when we all come to grips with these and many other truths.”
U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- Before the Biden-Harris administration took over the White House, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives usually revoked an average of 40 Federal Firearm Licenses (FFLs) per year. But, in the 11 months since Joe Biden declared war on “rogue gun dealers,” the ATF has revoked 273 FFLs – an increase of more than 500%. However, rather than targeting the true rogues, Biden’s ATF is revoking FFLs for the most minor of paperwork errors, which were never a concern for the ATF until Biden weaponized the agency.
“This has nothing to do with the ATF and everything to do with the DOJ,” said John Clark of FFL Consultants. Clark is a firearm industry expert who said the ATF announced the number of revocations at a recent Firearm Industry Conference.
“The vast majority of the ATF don’t like this any more than the industry does,” he said. “It’s Biden.”
Clark and business partner John Bocker crisscross the country to help gun dealers fight back against Biden’s overreach – a service that is free to all members of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Their mantra is: “Get it right the first time.”
“Our goal is to prevent an incident from occurring,” Bocker has said. “Our goal is prevention – get it right the first time. We are the proactive and preventative arm of the NSSF.”
Nowadays, they’re extremely busy. “I had three revocation hearings last week,” Clark said.
Key to the massive increase in revocations is Biden’s zero-tolerance for willful violations policy, which Clark said relies upon a new definition of willful. If a dealer makes a simple mistake, they can now lose their license, because the new definition of willful states that the dealer knew the law, but willfully chose to violate it anyway – regardless of whether it was an oversight, an error by an employee or a simple paperwork mistake.
“They have twisted negligence into willful,” Clark said. “These are not uncommon errors that we’re seeing. Things happen.”
On paper, Biden’s new policy seems clear:
Absent extraordinary circumstances that would need to be justified to the Director, ATF will seek to revoke the licenses of dealers the first time that they violate federal law by willfully.
Transferring a firearm to a prohibited person
Failing to run a required background check
Falsifying records, such as a firearms transaction form
Failing to respond to an ATF tracing request
Refusing to permit ATF to conduct an inspection in violation of the law
However, Clark and Bocker are seeing these rules pushed far beyond the realm of common sense or fairness, and local gun dealers are paying the price.
For example, the transaction number for a NICS background check requires nine digits. If a gun dealer mistakenly omits a number, their license can be revoked for failing to run a background check. Under the Biden-Harris administration, there is no longer any room for human error.
Similarly, the ATF has started contracting out its trace requests, Clark said. He and Bocker have talked to a dealer whom the ATF accused of not complying with a trace request. They fault, they found, actually belonged to the ATF, which hadn’t updated its records from the contractors. Until this was clarified, the dealer was at risk of losing everything.
Biden first announced his zero-tolerance policy for “rogue gun dealers” in June of last year. He claimed these dealers were responsible for skyrocketing violent crime rates in major cities historically controlled by Democrats.
The violence wasn’t caused by weak prosecutors who refuse to hold criminals accountable, or gangs or underfunded police departments or by any combination thereof, he said. It was all the fault of “rogue gun dealers,” who Biden claimed willfully transfer firearms to prohibited persons, and/or refuse to cooperate with a tracing request from the ATF.
To vet Biden’s rogue gun dealer theory, the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project immediately sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the ATF, seeking the following:
Copies of documents that show the number of Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) and their state of residence, who have been prosecuted for willfully transferring a firearm to a prohibited person over the past three years (from June 23, 2018 to June 23, 2021.)
Copies of documents that show the number of Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) and their state of residence, who have been prosecuted for ignoring and/or refusing to cooperate with a tracing request from the BATFE, over the past three years (from June 23, 2018 to June 23, 2021.)
(Note: We did not seek the names or other identifiers of any FFL.)
We’re still waiting for a response.
In the 11 months since the FOIA request was filed, the ATF has not complied with the law. The ATF is in a trick-bag of sorts. They can comply with federal law and provide the documents, which will likely reveal that Biden’s rogue gun dealer policy is just a ruse, or they can continue to deny and delay the FOIA request even though their actions violate federal law.
Takeaways
If there is a dealer who transfers firearms to prohibited persons, fails to conduct background checks and ignores requests from the ATF to help trace firearms used in a crime, they should lose their FFL. I don’t know anyone who disagrees with that. However, these are not the type of dealers the ATF is targeting at Biden’s behest. The Biden-Harris administration has ordered the ATF to revoke FFLs for even the most minor of paperwork errors, solely to support its rogue-dealer myth.
There is no doubt Biden will soon hold a press conference touting the effectiveness of his zero-tolerance policy and the hundreds of “rogue gun dealers” whose licenses were revoked as a result. What he won’t mention is that none of the dealers who lost their livelihoods contributed to the skyrocketing violent crime rates of major metros. They were simply law-abiding men and women who made a minor paperwork error, which Biden has now criminalized as part of his ongoing war on our guns.
This story is presented by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and wouldn’t be possible without you. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support more pro-gun stories like this.
About Lee Williams
Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer,” is the chief editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.
Even if the Biden administration refuses to quell threats and intimidation, pro-lifers and religious believers have – and should use – the remedies that the law provides for them.
Pro-abortion groups this past week have called for increased lawlessness to express their opposition to the expected reversal of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. Apparently having failed to persuade either the court of the soundness of their legal position or Congress of the necessity of codifying Roe in a federal statute, these groups are committing, or threatening to commit, hate crimes targeting churches and worshippers.
The real or intended victims of these outrages are not defenseless. The legal system affords them robust protections against violations of their right to free exercise of religion. These include both federal and state criminal and civil remedies and private civil actions under federal and state law.
Churches and congregants alike should make full use of our legal system to protect themselves against pro-abortion forces that are vandalizing church property and attempting to intimidate believers as they worship. Not only do they owe it to themselves to defend their religious liberty, they have a duty to the larger community to combat these unmistakable hate crimes.
To date, President Biden has failed to personally denounce these threats to religious liberty by the pro-abortion forces that are Democrats’ political allies and core constituents. So has his Justice Department, which was quick to condemn parents appearing at public school board meetings. An unnamed White House official made a meaningless comment, and Press Secretary Jen Psaki finally condemned “violence, threats, or vandalism” on Twitter Monday, but the president himself has yet to speak out against pro-abortionists’ recent violent tactics.
Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland should be publicly shamed if their inaction continues. And if the administration chooses to turn a blind eye as the legal rights of American believers are trashed, state attorneys general can and should fill the breach.
Private persons can also bring tort actions under federal and state law, and if successful might obtain monetary damages in amounts that could be a significant blow to the pro-abortion movement and its (often undisclosed) donors.
Two Forms of Attack on Religious Liberty
The assaults on religious liberty are coming in two forms. One is the vandalization of church property, such as happened in Boulder, Colo., soon after the leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs. Vandals broke the windows and spray-painted over the doors of the Sacred Heart of Mary Church and left pro-abortion messages, including “keep your religion off our bodies” and “my body, my choice.”
Over the past two years, Colorado has seen a series of attacks (not all proclaiming pro-abortion views) on Catholic churches. These attacks include one last October on the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver, and another in September on St. Louis Catholic Church in a Boulder suburb (involving pro-abortion graffiti).
What is happening in Colorado unfortunately has been happening throughout the country. In January, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reported that there had been at least 129 attacks on Catholic churches in 35 states and the District of Columbia since May 2020. Secular sources like The Wall Street Journal have noted the increase in desecration of Catholic churches as well. If Roe is indeed overruled, expect worse.
In a second line of attack, the shadowy pro-abortion group Ruth Sent Us has called, not only for demonstrations outside the homes of six Supreme Court justices, but also for the disruption of services in Catholic churches on Mother’s Day during Sunday mass. The group posted a message on Twitter, stating “Whether you’re a ‘Catholic for Choice,’ ex-Catholic, of other or no faith, recognize that six extremist Catholics set out to overturn Roe. Stand at or in a local Catholic Church Sun May 8.”
Protesters disrupted planned services at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, some engaging in grotesque pantomimes of abortion immediately outside the church grounds. Christopher Plant, whose bio says he is the pastor of St. Bartholomew the Apostle Catholic Church in Katy, Texas, took to Twitter on Monday to report that the church’s tabernacle had been stolen the night before.
Meanwhile, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the headquarters of pro-life group Wisconsin Family Action in Madison, Wis., with the words “If abortions aren’t safe you aren’t either” graffitied outside. A pro-life center in Denton, Texas was also defaced.
Federal Remedy: The FACE Act
These dangers to the peaceful exercise of religious liberties must be confronted and overcome. Even if the Biden administration refuses to quell threats and intimidation, believers have – and should use – the remedies that the law provides for them.
Of these remedies, one powerful option is, ironically, The Freedom of Access to [Abortion] Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). In an obvious legislative compromise, FACE protects not only abortion facilities, providers, and clients, but also criminalizes actions or attempts intended “by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction” to injure, intimidate or interfere with “any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.” Likewise, FACE criminalizes the actions of anyone who “intentionally damages or destroys the property of a place of religious worship.”
Enforcement of these criminal provisions is, however, in the hands of the vehemently pro-abortion Biden administration, which can be expected to tailor the execution of the laws to its political ends. Even so, FACE offers other means for vindicating religious liberties.
This is because FACE also authorizes churches and individual worshippers injured by the relevant misconduct to bring private actions on their own behalf. If entitled to relief, they may obtain either (or both) an injunction against the misconduct or “compensatory and punitive damages,” along with an award of reasonable legal fees. These legal awards, especially if they include punitive damages, could be crippling for pro-abortion defendants.
Finally, FACE authorizes state attorneys general who find “reasonable cause to believe” that a violation “is being, has been, or may be” occurring, to bring civil actions. The Virginia attorney general has already signaled his intention to refer any criminal violations for prosecution. Concerned citizens should demand that their state attorneys general follow suit.
State Criminal Law Protections
States also commonly have hate crimes statutes that are similar to these federal civil rights laws. Colorado, for example, has at least two statutes that might apply to the vandalization of a Catholic church in that state. One statute makes it a crime knowingly to “desecrate” (which includes defacing) “any place of worship.” It will be interesting to see if the state’s Attorney General Phil Weiser, who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations, will bring a case under the state’s anti-desecration law on behalf of the Catholic churches in his jurisdiction.
Privately Enforceable State Tort Laws
Lawsuits against the pro-abortion extremists who attack churches or worshippers can also be brought under state tort laws by the injured parties. Professor John Banzhaf of George Washington University Law School has argued that civil actions, especially if class actions, can bring justice to those who suffered injuries when “peaceful protests” have turned into violence that damaged their lives or property. For instance, journalist Andy Ngo sued those who beat when while he was covering a “peaceful protest” that turned into a riot, alleging the torts of assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress as well as a violation of the state’s anti-racketeering act.
Legal Self-Defense
Finally, churches and worshippers should remember that they have a legal right of self-defense against threats to life and limb. The choice of forms that self-defense should take – churches might install security cameras, provide cans of pepper spray to their congregations, or even bring in defenders who openly bear arms – is best left to the consciences of pastors and congregants within the confines of applicable law.
Robert Delahunty is a Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the American Way of Life. Teresa S. Collett is a Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, where she directs the Pro-Life Center.
USA – -(Ammoland.com)- I’m Dan Wos and welcome to another Ammoland News Second Amendment Update.
Guns are used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year — or about 6,850 times a day. [1] This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives. [2]
Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.[3]
As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse.[4]
Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5 million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense every year. The National Institute of Justice published this figure in 1997 as part of “Guns in America” — a study which was authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.[5]
Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606).[6] And readers of Newsweek learned that “only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The ‘error rate’ for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high.”[7]
Handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense. Citizens use handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year. [8] Many of these self-defense handguns could be labeled as “Saturday Night Specials.”
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There is actually a real misconception of the Old West that truly needs correcting. That is the notion of an uncivilized Wild West, where antisocial and violent behavior was the norm, and where citizens were afraid to leave their homes, afraid of rampant crime and in fear for their lives.
This savage perspective turns out to be incorrect—false assumptions of the Old West based on sensationalist press, the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show of the 1880s and ‘90s, and subsequently cowboy shows and Hollywood movies. Bands of working cowboys and good citizens did not go about town in their leisure time challenging, outdrawing, and shooting each other in a systematized orgy of violence and gunfights as portrayed in the movies.
Bad men and violent outlaws did kill each other, but almost always left the good people of the towns alone. The famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona, in which Wyatt Earp, and his brothers, Virgil and Morgan, with Doc Holliday, killed three of the outlaw “Cowboys,” became a celebrated incident not only because of the unique circumstances but also because brother lawmen killed brother outlaws in a historic shootout. Even then it was newsworthy and certainly not a daily occurrence.
Gunfighters, Highwaymen and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier by historian Roger D. McGrath
In his book, Gunfighters, Highwaymen and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier, historian Roger D. McGrath has corrected the historic record with substantive scholarship. After studying the Sierra Nevada frontier towns of Aurora and Bodie, McGrath found that those mining towns, where audacious young men and gunmen roamed freely packing either Colt Navy .36 six shot pistols in Aurora or Colt double action “lightning” or “peacekeeper” revolvers in Bodie, were peaceful towns, except for the quarrels in the carousing and gambling saloons. Otherwise, both towns carried on well, and everyone not interested in whoring, drinking, and gun fighting were left alone.
True, the homicide rate was high among those carousing and looking for fights in the saloons, but in the rest of the populace, the old, the ladies, and those not willing to pick fights, homicides were rare. Likewise, robbery, burglary, and rape were rare. Murder was confined to the “drunkards upholding their honor.” The homicide rate for Aurora and Bodie were 64 and 116 per 100,000, respectively, compared to Washington, D.C., at 72 per year in the 1990s. Likewise, the burglary and robbery rates were 6 and 84 per 100,000, respectively, for Bodie; compared to 2,661 and 1,140, respectively, for New York City in 1980.
The townspeople, although they might have carried guns, respected each other, and townspeople did not even bother to lock their doors at night. Similar observations have been made by other researchers studying the supposedly violent and crime-ridden Lincoln County, New Mexico; the Kansas towns of Dodge City and Wichita in the 1870s; and the Texas frontier towns from 1875 to 1890.
Returning to the issue of the possible confiscation of American firearms in the current era, consider the practical obstacles, not to mention the constitutional protection. Trying to blame, register, ban, and confiscate (one step usually follows the other) over 300 million firearms owned by Americans would bring about a tinder box situation, at least an order of magnitude worse than Prohibition, for Americans obey just and moral laws but not capricious or tyrannical laws, and a veritable police state would be required to enforce the draconian gun laws that would be necessary to carry that out.
Thus, politicians who sadly continue to use the latest tragedy (and the emotionalism and the passions elicited in its wake) to push for the usual round of gun control—while ignoring the accumulated objective research published in the social sciences and the criminologic literature—are not sincerely lamenting the deaths of the innocent or sympathizing with their families, but attempting to score political points, political points at the expense of the victims or good citizens.
They are also further polarizing America and tearing apart the fabric of this great nation by using emotionalism rather than common sense to bolster their unwise, political actions. Let’s stop demonizing guns and end the shootings by incarcerating the criminals and identifying and healing the mentally ill, for much work needs to be done in the psychiatric and mental health arenas and in the task of reducing violence. Sensationalization of violence day after day by the press, the electronic media and the internet—heaped upon impressionable individuals subject to our increasingly dumbed down, popular culture and public education—is having a malevolent effect that needs to stop.
Written by Dr. Miguel Faria
Miguel A. Faria, Jr, MD is a retired professor of Neurosurgery and Medical History at Mercer University School of Medicine. He founded Hacienda Publishing and is Associate Editor in Chief in Neuropsychiatry and World Affairs of Surgical Neurology International. He served on the CDC’s Injury Research Grant Review Committee. This article is excerpted, updated, and edited from his book, America, Guns, and Freedom: A Journey Into Politics and the Public Health & Gun Control Movements (2019).
San Diego, California is one of several cities in the state that have banned the possession of “ghost guns” in recent months. Anyone caught with an unserialized firearm in the city is now subject to criminal charges, but the first case to actually get to the sentencing phase is a perfect demonstration of just how useless the new ordinance really is.
The ordinance, authored by San Diego Councilmember Marni von Wilpert (a name that sounds like it would also be good for a Disney villain), in essence mirrors existing California law, which already prohibits the possession of an unserialized firearm. The San Diego ordinance specifically creates a misdemeanor offense to possess or sell any firearm that does not have a serial number on it, which is supposed to make criminals think twice about carrying a home-built gun around. As of March of this year, the law wasn’t having any impact on violent crime, with homicides up 80% compared to the same time period in 2021 and 77 unserialized firearms seized by police. There were also 295 serialized firearms seized by police, which is another sign that going after “ghost guns” isn’t going to stop the individuals committing the shootings in the city.
But none of that matters to the virtue-signaling politicians in San Diego, including von Wilpert, who are instead now eagerly singing the praises of the “ghost gun” ordinance now that someone’s been sentenced for violating the law.
“The city’s novel ghost gun ordinance is an effective tool for removing untraceable firearms from the hands of criminals,” City Attorney Mara W. Elliott said. “We thank Councilmember Marni von Wilpert for bringing forward this ordinance, which keeps San Diego at the forefront of our nation’s battle against gun violence.”
… “It’s clear from this conviction that San Diego’s landmark ghost gun law is starting to work to stop the proliferation of dangerous, untraceable firearms in our community,” said von Wilpert.
Is it though? I realize I haven’t actually said what the sentence the defendant received here, so let’s delve a little deeper into the events that led to 23-year old Rene Orozco having the dubious distinction of being the subject of a press release by the city attorney.
Orozco’s arrest apparently didn’t make the news at the time, but according to the Elliott’s account he was arrested after fleeing from police and leading them on a car chase through San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood, allegedly tossing the unserialized gun as he then continued to try to elude officers on foot.
Would Orozco would have avoided arrest and prosecution if the gun he’d been caught with had a serial number? Of course not. So what exactly is the point of a misdemeanor charge for possessing a “ghost gun” when he could already be charged with illegal possession of a weapon for simply having a gun in the first place. Then there are the charges of eluding police, tampering with evidence, and any number of traffic misdemeanors that were committed during the police pursuit. But the City Attorney needs to show that this new ordinance is working, and so Orozco was charged with having a ghost gun, and now gets to experience firsthand the draconian punishment that will surely cause him to rethink the decisions he made.
He was sentenced last week to 45 days in custody and one year of probation. As a result, his driver’s license will be suspended from six months and he is prohibited from owning firearms for a year.
45 days in custody with good credit time means that Orozco will likely spend about three weeks in the county lockup, which doesn’t sound like much time considering how scary “ghost guns” are supposed to be. And again, he could have gotten that same sentence just by charging him with misdemeanor crimes in California state statute that have nothing to do with unserialized firearms. What’s the point?
San Diego’s “ghost gun” ordinance is pure political theater; designed to have an impact on the electorate, not armed criminals. As long as politicians like von Wilpert can convince constituents that she’s “doing something” to address their fears about violent crime, she doesn’t have to bother coming up with doing something that actually works. And in California, “doing something” means putting another gun control law on the books that at best is worthless, and far too often ends up harming the law-abiding instead of curtailing violent criminals.
Tombstone, AZ--(Ammoland.com)- On May 2, 2022, the New York Attorney General’s Office filed its Second Amended Complaint against the National Rifle Association.
Not only the Association but its Chief Executive Officer Wayne LaPierre, Secretary, and General Counsel John Frazer, Former Treasurer and CFO Wilson “Woody” Philips, and Former Deputy CEO Josh Powell.
As with the original complaint and the previous amended complaint, this one is full of very specific, largely verifiable, and utterly damning charges against NRA’s top officers and executives. Many of the previous accusations have been admitted to by some of the various parties, while Woody Phillips has refused to answer most questions, based on his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
It needs to be understood that LaPierre and the others are not named in the suit based on their positions within the NRA, as when someone sues a state and names the Attorney General or the governor as a representative of the state. The four named defendants were named for specific actions each is accused of, and the NRA itself is named for failing to stop them. With that in mind, legal experts said early on that the NRA’s best defense against the suit would be to adopt the following policies:
Remove the named defendants from any position of power within the Association – particularly any position that would allow any of them to have any oversight or influence over the Association’s legal strategy in battling the suit.
Initiate a thorough internal investigation by a Board-appointed committee with the power to get answers to its questions.
Adopt a policy of full cooperation and transparency working with state regulators.
Institute strict policy and oversight rules to correct and avoid future problems, that would be backed up by consequential enforcement.
Plead victim status to the court, declaring that, if the named defendants (or others) abused their positions, then the NRA was the victim, not the perpetrator, and therefore should not be penalized.
A genuine response to the allegations would go a long way toward blunting the very real political motivations involved in the suit. New York Attorney General Letitia James is a highly motivated political actor, and she has not been shy about expressing her animosity toward the NRA, its mission, and its members. The Association should deal cautiously with her office, and request that the judge make sure that this personal and political bias doesn’t taint the case or cause undue injury to the Association.
This animosity on the part of AG James has actually been one of the strongest arguments from defenders and apologists of Wayne LaPierre. They point to James’s hatred of the NRA, and her political ambitions, and conclude that the whole case is just trumped-up lies and political theater.
The problem with that assertion is that LaPierre himself has admitted under oath that most of the charges against him are true.
He admits to billing the NRA for personal travel for himself and his family. He admits to improperly accepting gifts from major vendors, and awarding those same vendors multi-million-dollar contracts with no competitive bidding. He admits to giving multi-million-dollar severance packages to retiring and even fired employees, usually in exchange for them signing a strict nondisclosure agreement about NRA activities.
And he admits to giving contracts to family members and former staffers, often with little or no performance requirement attached. He also admits to doing all of this without clearing it, or even reporting it, through or to, the NRA Board, as required by state law and NRA policy.
His main defense in all of this, is to claim that either, it wasn’t improper, he didn’t know it was improper, and/or he didn’t know what other people were doing. Not a very impressive defense from a CEO who’s being paid in excess of $1.6 million per year.
One is reminded of Bart Simpson’s all-purpose defense: “Nobody saw me! I wasn’t there! You can’t prove a thing!”
So the big question is: Why is Wayne LaPierre still controlling the NRA?
Why would any organization facing existential threats – most of those threats based on accusations of misconduct and dereliction on the part of its chief executive – allow that executive to continue to hold inordinate sway over the organization? And why would any organization facing this kind of turmoil in its executive offices allow that same executive to retain control over the legal strategy of the organization in addressing the charges?
An equally perplexing question, is why the Board has so far not even attempted to rein in its rogue executives?
As noted above, NY AG Letitia James hates the NRA and all it stands for, and she wants to see it destroyed. The judge in the case has already taken dissolution of the Association off the table as a potential punishment, should the AG win her case. Her latest Amended Complaint focuses less on the NRA as a target, and more on the officers and directors – as it should – with the complaint calling for severe financial penalties and restitution payments from the Association’s wayward “leaders.” The complaint calls for the removal of LaPierre and his followers, but only as part of the penalty phase of the trial. That isn’t going to happen until sometime next year.
Meanwhile, LaPierre and company remain in control of the Associations resources, and most importantly, in control of its legal strategy – which amounts to shoveling millions of dollars into the pockets of New York lawyer William Brewer, who was originally hired by LaPierre to head off a threatened lawsuit from the NY AG back in 2018. Obviously Brewer failed in that mission, but he’s been very successful at extracting cash from the Association.
Brewer has reportedly been drawing over $2 million per month, averaging around $30 million per year, for the past 3 years. At the same time, NRA membership numbers have been in a nosedive, fundraising has collapsed, and the Association has cut practically all of its core programs to the bone.
If LaPierre and his enablers were to be removed from power now, the Association might do what they should have done from the beginning: Claim victim status and reorganize, without the crippling payments to the Brewer law firm. With that, they should be able to start recovering membership and see improvements in their fundraising, not to mention begin to recover the trust of its members. But that would not be seen as a good thing by Letitia James. Those steep legal bills, along with the potential of a court-mandated lawsuit against the NRA from the NRA Foundation, if things go as expected in a lawsuit filed by the AG of Washington DC, could totally bankrupt the NRA, and that would be a big win for Letitia James.
I’m not an attorney, but I’ve spoken with knowledgeable attorneys, and they keep coming back to the need for the NRA to distance itself from the accused “leaders,” even if only with temporary furloughs or compartmentalizing them away from certain aspects of the Association, particularly the legal strategy. They have also suggested that the NY AG could – and should – force this action by filing a request for partial summary judgment based on the admissions already submitted by LaPierre and some of his supporters. LaPierre has admitted to a variety of offenses, any one of which would fully justify his removal from office. Other NRA “leaders” have also admitted to various transgressions and failures in their fiduciary duties. With those admissions, it should not be difficult to convince the judge to remove LaPierre and the offending officers on the basis that they are using the NRA’s resources to protect LaPierre and themselves, rather than fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities to the NRA and its members.
Wayne LaPierre, along with NRA President Charles Cotton, 1st VP Willes Lee, and 2nd VP David Coy, should be the subjects of a motion pointing out that they have all admitted to actions that should disqualify them from participating in the management of the Association, and especially anything to do with setting legal strategy.
If protecting the assets and interests of the Association’s members is of any concern at all to the attorneys in the NY AG’s Office – as the law states are their primary obligation – then they would have such a motion filed within days.
While we would hope that such a motion would be filed and addressed by the court prior to the Members’ Meeting in Houston on May 28, 2022, that seems unlikely, so NRA members must press the attack from different directions. The primary tactic must be to pressure NRA Directors to do what they should have done at least three years ago: Remove Wayne LaPierre. The best opportunity for the Board to take this action will be at the Board meeting on Monday following the Members’ Meeting. At that time, it will only take a simple majority of Directors to elect new leadership.
New NRA Leadership ~ LTC Allen West?
A group of concerned NRA members, including former and current members of the Board of Directors, want to draft former Director, LTC Allen West to run for the Executive Vice President position at the meeting in Houston. West has the support of many and could work with reformers to clean up the NRA and get it back on the right track, and he has a record of integrity and effectiveness.
Along with electing LTC West to the position of Executive Vice President, the Board needs to elect a slate of officers to back West in his reform efforts, and to lead the NRA’s legal strategy going forward. All of this makes it absolutely critical that every NRA Director attend the meetings in Houston, and be prepared to stand up for the membership. It’s equally critical that NRA members attend the Members’ Meeting on Saturday the 28th, 2022, to call out the lies and corruption, and to put some starch into the backs of the Directors. We also have a campaign underway to recruit, nominate, and elect a slate of reform candidates for the Board of Directors in the 2023 election.
Much more information about all of this is posted on our website, www.FirearmsCoalition.org, with both the first and second Amended Complaints, along with the Responses to the first one from LaPierre and the NRA. It’s a lot to digest, but it’s critical reading for anyone concerned about the future of the NRA.
I hope to see you in Houston.
NYS Second Amended Complaint against the National Rifle Association, May 2022
2020 People of the State of NY v NRA & Co May 2022 Amended
About Jeff Knox:
Jeff Knox is a second-generation political activist and director of The Firearms Coalition. His father Neal Knox led many of the early gun rights battles for your right to keep and bear arms. Read Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War.
The Firearms Coalition is a loose-knit coalition of individual Second Amendment activists, clubs and civil rights organizations. Founded by Neal Knox in 1984, the organization provides support to grassroots activists in the form of education, analysis of current issues, and with a historical perspective of the gun rights movement. The Firearms Coalition has offices in Buckeye, Arizona, and Manassas, VA. Visit: www.FirearmsCoalition.org.
Biden’s plan is the same as ever: gun control. IMG NRA-ILA
U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- From time to time, the topic comes up in which we are tasked with deciding if a Democrat deserves our vote based primarily on their support of the 2nd Amendment. I was in a discussion about this topic and realized that there’s a major problem with this.
Often, we hear Democrats announce that they are “gun-owners” and/or “hunters” prior to some sort of anti-gun statement. I have my doubts as to whether their “gun ownership” amounts to much more than a dusty old war rifle that grandpa left in the attic and their implication to be “one of us” is often a tactic used to gain some sort of “authority” in a gun-control debate, but let’s look at this from a practical perspective.
If I were to support a Democrat who claims to be “pro-gun,” (whether that be a Senator, Representative or even the President,) what other policies am I inadvertently supporting, and how high on the hierarchical scale of values are gun rights for this person?
Show me a Democrat who claims they don’t support universal background checks, red flag laws, magazine capacity restrictions, waiting periods, 21-year-old age requirements, semi-automatic rifle bans, bump-stock bans, suppressor bans, forced reset trigger bans & suing manufacturers out of business, and I will show you a liar.
What makes them a Democrat? Isn’t the very reason they vote on the left, to support the policies of those on the left? How many more left-wing policies do you want your children and grandchildren to be burdened with? Is it likely that they will actually go against their party on gun rights when you need them to? Have you ever seen that happen, and in the rare case it might, where else are they compromising your values? Some strong supporters of the 2nd Amendment are willing to support a Democrat who claims to support gun rights. Is this because they believe we are converting them? Good luck with that. The real question is, what else are we getting in that dysfunctional social package?
In an announcement on April, 11, 2022, on “ghost guns,” Joe Biden revealed this exact hypocrisy when he called firearms dealers “merchants of death,” yelled and screamed about “weapons of war” and then went on to say, “and by the way. It’s gonna sound bizarre. I support the 2nd Amendment.”
When we support a so-called “pro 2nd Amendment Democrat,” are we also supporting their position on open borders, abortion, CRT, bisexual bathrooms, “sex-ed” for Kindergarteners, the termination of oil drilling in America, the green new deal, ESG, the early release of prisoners, bail reform, never-ending medical mandates, the defunding of our police departments, welfare dependency and the overall forfeiture of our basic ability to make our own decisions? Because if so, I’m out.
So why are any of us being asked to put at risk, and most likely compromise, traditional American values and Conservative beliefs, just to get a “2A-friendly” vote in Congress by some politician who claims to support our gun rights? (Which by the way, probably wouldn’t happen when it comes down to actual voting behavior due to massive Congressional pressure from their peers.) Could it be Democrats recognize how strong the 2nd Amendment is and how protective of it, most Americans are? Could presenting a so-called “pro-gun Democrat,” be a way of coercing Republicans into unwittingly compromising at the voting booth with the hopes of saving our 2nd Amendment?
Sorry. The 2nd Amendment is not up for debate or compromise.
When I hear people suggesting that I should support a Democrat because they are “pro-gun,” I smell a rat. I have a problem trusting most Republicans with the 2nd Amendment. Now you’re asking me to vote for a Democrat? I don’t think so.
Dan Wos is available for Press Commentary. For more information contact PR HERE
Dan Wos is a nationally recognized 2nd Amendment advocate and Author of the “GOOD GUN BAD GUY” series. He speaks at events, is a contributing writer for many publications, and can be found on radio stations across the country. Dan has been a guest on the Sean Hannity Show, NRATV, and several others. Speaking on behalf of gun-rights, Dan exposes the strategies of the anti-gun crowd and explains their mission to disarm law-abiding American gun-owners
As Project 21 member Craig DeLuz pointed out in a commentary first published by the California Republican Assembly:
