Author: GRFadmin

National Foundation for Gun Rights has the honor of partnering with Top Shot Dustin Youth Marksmanship Camp by providing a limited number of scholarships to their Fall 2022 camp.

The camp dates for this fall are October 8-9, October 22-23, and November 12-13. To apply go to marksmancamp.com.

Today, Obama-appointed Judge Moore of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado granted our request for a Temporary Restraining Order against the Town of Superior, CO’s ban on semi-automatic rifles and standard-capacity magazines.

Click here to read it >>

Our joint lawsuit with sister organization Rocky Mountain Gun Owners challenges Superior’s ordinance banning standard-capacity magazines, so-called “assault weapons,” and public carry. Today’s order blocks the city from enforcing the mag ban and so-called “assault weapons” ban for 14 days.

The court took seriously the direction it received from the Bruen ruling, stating that “the Court is unaware of historical precedent that would permit a governmental entity to entirely ban a type of weapon that is commonly used by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, whether in an individual’s home or in public.”

The court further recognized that “irreparable harm”, a requirement for a Temporary Restraining Order, “consider[s] the infringement of a constitutional right enough and require[s] no further showing of irreparable injury.”

Unfortunately, the court did not grant the Temporary Restraining Order in regard to the open carry section of the gun control ordinance, since it does not constitute a complete ban on public carry.

Today was a major victory for Second Amendment rights. This may be the first gun rights win in the federal courts post Bruen, and spells doom for outrageous gun control schemes everywhere – including Colorado’s statewide ban on standard-capacity magazines.

Stay tuned for more details as we continue to fight for gun rights.

To help us in this fight please consider donating here.

At today’s hearing on our lawsuit against the City of San Jose’s gun tax our lawyers made it clear that in fighting this ordinance we have the Constitution on our side, and not just the Second Amendment.

This lawsuit is a challenge to San Jose, CA’s ordinance imposing an annual tax and liability insurance mandate on gun owners – simply for the “privilege” of owning a gun.

This is a wildly unconstitutional scheme. Imposing a tax or requiring insurance on any other Bill of Rights guarantee would be an obvious constitutional infringement, yet San Jose seems determined to treat the Second Amendment as a “second-class right.”

We filed a lawsuit against this ordinance as soon as it was enacted and moved for a preliminary injunction to stop San Jose from enforcing the tax and insurance mandate. Today, we had our first hearing in federal court on the preliminary injunction motion.

Our legal team demonstrated how this tax and insurance mandate burdens burden the Second Amendment by contrasting it with a tax on speech or prayer, and pointed out how the Supreme Court’s New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen ruling obliterates San Jose’s anti-gun arguments.

The tax also directly attacks the First Amendment, since the tax must be paid to a private non-profit that will provide some sort of “gun violence” services. In other words, the moneys collected will be used to fund some sort of anti-gun messaging. However, the government cannot force you to pay for messaging you may or may not agree with. This creates a First Amendment violation on top of the Second.

San Jose’s attorneys took the brazenly untruthful position that their ordinance does not attack Second Amendment rights at all, so Bruen should not apply to them. Here’s a quote from their brief to the court:

“What Bruen did not do was raise any serious questions about the constitutionality of the San Jose Ordinance here. To the contrary, Bruen indicates the Ordinance does not even Trigger Second Amendment analysis because it does not “infringe[]” anyone’s rights to “keep and bear arms.” Moreover, even if it did, per Bruen the Ordinance’s features are well within states’ historical authority to regulate firearms.”

Of course, that is wildly untrue, as a simple reading of Justice Thomas’ Bruen opinion proves.

It remains to be seen whether the court will honor the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling. We anticipate a ruling on our preliminary injunction motion soon and will update as soon as we get it.

If the court rules against us, we can appeal to the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals, and we are prepared to take this case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

This case is not just about San Jose. This case is backed by gun grabbers like Giffords, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns,” who assisted with the drafting of the gun ownership tax ordinance. If they are successful in San Jose, this policy will be spreading across the country.

As of now San Jose has suspended enforcement of the ordinance until sometime in December, although this could change at any time. We will keep fighting until this ordinance is struck down once and for all, but we can only do this with you continued support.

Please considered joining the fight by contributing here.

In the landmark Supreme Court decision New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, Justice Thomas upheld, in no uncertain terms, your constitutional right to bear arms. Yet just a day after this ruling, California Attorney General Rob Bonta is already defying this decision by doubling down on California’s “may issue” permit laws – this time through a “good moral character” requirement when applying for a public carry permit.

California’s current permitting laws allow local officials to grant carry permits to applicants demonstrating “special need” and who are of “good moral character.” The Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling struck down “special need” requirements for permitting, but did not specifically address “good moral character” requirements.

In a letter sent to all Californian district attorneys, police chiefs, sheriffs, county counsels, and city attorneys, Bonta recognizes that Bruen eliminated their “good cause” requirements for public carry permits and encourages them to institute “good moral character” requirements instead.

What constitutes someone having a “good moral character”? It is left entirely up to the discretion of the local official, but the list of possible disqualifying flaws is long and ugly. Here are a few of the worst suggestions from the Attorney General:

Any arrest in the last five years regardless of disposition. Any “mistake” by law enforcement can lead to stripping your gun rights for five years, opening the floodgates for abuses of power. Being arrested for something does not mean you are guilty of anything, yet under this scheme you could lose your rights.

“Respecting the rights of others and the absence of hatred and racism.” Social media posts will be searched to make sure everything you post lines up with the left’s radical agenda. Any comments or posts that could be twisted or spun as “hateful” or “disrespectful” could lead to the loss of fundamental rights.

Observance of fiduciary duty and fiscal responsibility. This could mean that if you have any debt and/or you don’t land in the right tax bracket you can be denied a permit – a recipe to make sure only rich elites are afforded their constitutional rights.

When told by the Supreme Court not to violate your Second Amendment rights, California doubled down and is now attacking First Amendment rights too.

This is why your National Foundation for Gun Rights just sent a cease-and-desist letter to Attorney General Bonta instructing him that what he is describing in this “good moral character” scheme is nothing more than “a witch hunt against anyone who wishes to exercise their Second Amendment rights to carry in public.”

We point out that this exact type of “loophole” was directly addressed in Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence, “As the Court explains, New York’s outlier may-issue regime is constitutionally problematic because it grants open-ended discretion to licensing officials and authorizes licenses only for those applicants who can show some special need apart from self-defense. Those features of New York’s regime—the unchanneled discretion for licensing officials and the special-need requirement—in effect deny the right to carry handguns for self-defense to many ‘ordinary, law-abiding citizens.’” (emphasis added)

The National Foundation for Gun Rights is monitoring this situation closely to see how the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen is enforced in the State of California.  Further, we are ready to explore all legal options to aid any citizen whose First and Second Amendment rights are violated.

To read our cease-and-desist letter click here.

To see the anti-gun guidance sent out by AG” Bonta click here.

A case challenging California’s ban of standard-capacity magazines was recently appealed to the Supreme Court, and we just filed an amicus brief calling on the Court to take the case and rule in favor of the Second Amendment.

California initially banned the purchase of standard-capacity magazines (holding more than ten rounds of ammunition) in 2000, and in 2016 banned the actual possession of these magazines – without compensating magazine owners for the loss of their property. Gun owners who failed to dispose of their magazines could receive up to a year of jailtime.

These magazines are standard for many guns – including the most popular gun in America, the AR-15 – and include about half of all magazines in circulation. While California is the only state banning actual magazine possession, Maryland, Colorado, New Jersey, Hawaii, Vermont, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts have also banned the purchase of standard capacity magazines.

This is unacceptable.

Your National Foundation for Gun Rights is fighting this unconstitutional attack on the rights of law-abiding Americans by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the California magazine ban.

Click here to read our amicus brief >>

Specifically, we are asking the Supreme Court to take Duncan v. Bonta, a case out of the anti-gun 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals. The 9^th Circuit ruled incorrectly that the magazine ban is not a violation of the Second Amendment and that the law should be upheld.

The 9^th Circuit’s (which presides over California, Hawaii, Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana) “test” for whether or not a gun law violates the Second Amendment has accurately been described by Judge Lawrence VanDyke as, “providing numerous off-ramps for judges to uphold any gun-regulation in question without hardly breaking a sweat.” (McDougall v. Ventura, 2021)

The amicus brief we filed asking the Supreme Court to step up and take this case calls on the Justices to correctly rule in favor of the Second Amendment. As we said in our brief:

“History, tradition, and text demonstrate that the right to keep and bear arms is not a second-class right, and not subject to a second-tier, less-than-favorable analysis that eviscerates that right.”

In their own words, the 9^th Circuit has said they will continue to restrict gun rights “unless and until the Supreme Court tells” them otherwise. And we are telling the Supreme Court that it is high time they did just that.

If this law is upheld by the Supreme Court, it will be a green light to anti-gun politicians everywhere to follow California’s example by banning commonly owned standard-capacity magazines.

The National Foundation for Gun Rights will not stand by and let this happen. We are fighting for this law to be overturned by the Supreme Court in favor of your Second Amendment freedoms.

As with all freedoms, protecting them is not free. Please consider joining with us financially in this fight to protect the Second Amendment by clicking here.