Author: Cole Maerli

The Federal District Court in Connecticut ruled against the Second Amendment in our case against the state’s semi-auto and standard capacity magazine bans. You can read the ruling here.

In her ruling, Judge Janet Bond Arterton, a Clinton appointee, twisted the Supreme Court’s Heller and Bruen decisions in order to uphold gun control in a very long and convoluted ruling.

Bruen clearly states that “When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct…”, meaning that the burden falls on the government to prove that the legislation falls within the text, history, and tradition of firearm regulation in the US.

Judge Arterton ignored this and said:

“Nothing in Bruen or any other cases that the plaintiffs cite grants them an automatic presumption that their conduct is constitutionally protected which defendants are the required to affirmatively rebut.”

This impermissibly puts the burden of proof on us.

She went on to make two particular outrageous assertions in her ruling:

1. She calls gun owners liars, implying that just because an individual claims he owns a firearm strictly for the purposes of self-defense, that doesn’t actually mean that that’s what it will be used for.
2. She said that gun owners have to actually USE their weapons for self-defense in order to fall under the protection of the Second Amendment.

In other words, if an individual owns a firearm strictly for the purposes of self-defense, but is lucky enough to never actually be attacked, too bad. The Second Amendment doesn’t protect you.

If you want to read more of Judge Arterton’s judicial gymnastics, you can do so here.

We will be appealing to the Second Circuit, which also covers New York and Vermont. Our strategy is to get a semi-auto ban and magazine ban lawsuit to the Supreme Court and end these unconstitutional bans nationwide, so with our appeal to the 2^nd Circuit, we are one step closer to that goal.

Click here to contribute to our legal war chest so we can continue fighting for the Second Amendment in the courts!

The National Foundation for Gun Rights has filed an amicus brief in Hawai’i supporting the lawsuit against Hawai’i Revised Statutes Section 134, which effectively bans the carrying of firearms in the entirety of the state. Click Here to view.

H.R.S. 134 mandates that no person carrying a firearm shall enter private property unless given the express permission of the owner. This designation of all private property in the state as a “sensitive place” is a mockery of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen and denies the right to self-defense in nearly all areas open to the public.

Our brief highlights several ways in which the statute violates both Second and First Amendment rights. We also show how this statue fails to treat the Second Amendment the same as the First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendments as Clarence Thomas specifically explained it must be in the Bruen decision.

Law-abiding citizens of Hawai’i have the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, conduct that is covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment. There is also no historical tradition that would allow for this regulation, as district courts have struck down similar statutes in New York and New Jersey.

The statute also violates the basic First Amendment principle that freedom of speech prohibits the government from telling people what to say. With “sensitive places” being the standard for all private property, property owners who are fine with public carry are now compelled by the government to take a public position on the issue when they may prefer not to – which is the very nature of compelled speech.

Our Amicus Brief asks the district court to block the unconstitutional de facto ban on public carry in the state of Hawai’i. You can read the brief here.

Click here to contribute to our legal war chest so we can continue fighting for the Second Amendment in the courts!

The National Foundation for Gun Rights is suing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives over their pistol brace rule in the Northern District of Texas. Click here to view.

This rule reclassifies pistols with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, meaning that the ATF is seeking to regulate Americans by federal laws that were never intended to apply to them and their firearms.

Pistols with stabilizing braces are especially popular amongst veterans and other Americans with physical disabilities, making this rule discriminatory against them.

The ATF’s rule significantly expands the definition of a rifle and imposes potential criminal liability on millions of Americans without legislative authority.

We are seeking a preliminary injunction to protect our members from the ATF’s enforcement of this rule for the duration of the litigation.

Our suit comes on the heels of several other lawsuits to overturn the pistol brace rule, including Mock v. Garland, Britto v. ATF, SAF v. ATF, and Texas v. ATF. In these cases, federal courts (including the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals) have issued injunctions limited in scope only to the plaintiffs on those cases, their families, and (in the cases involving other gun rights organizations) their members.

Since those injunctions have been limited in scope to apply only to the plaintiffs of the other lawsuits, NAGR has partnered with Texas Gun Rights and Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) to file our own lawsuit to protect our members from this unconstitutional ATF rule.

WILL has already successfully obtained an injunction protecting their plaintiffs from the ATF in Britto v. ATF, and is representing NAGR and our members pro bono in our lawsuit.

Check out Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty here!

And to contribute to our legal fund, click here.