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.
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.
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 9th 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.
We are suing to end standard-capacity magazine bans once and for all!
In a joint lawsuit between the National Association for Gun Rights and our sister organization Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, we are challenging the Town of Superior, CO’s ordinance banning standard-capacity magazines, so-called “assault weapons,” and public carry.
This outrageous ordinance was passed mere weeks before the Supreme Court handed down its pro-gun ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. This ruling obliterated the “two-step” cost-benefit analysis framework lower courts have used to uphold gun control, defying the Second Amendment in the process.
Now, lower courts will be forced to start with the text of the Second Amendment and the surrounding historical context of the right to keep and bear arms understood by the founders at the time the Second and Fourteenth Amendments were enacted.
Needless to say, there is no way most gun control laws can withstand this true Second Amendment scrutiny, and that includes the Town of Superior’s mag ban and “assault weapons” ban.
If our lawsuit succeeds, this will have broad implications for standard-capacity magazine bans and “assault weapons” bans in the entire 10th Circuit and even the entire country (if the case is appealed to the Supreme Court).
Today we filed a lawsuit against California Attorney General Rob Bonta for the outrageous leak of gun owners’ personal data, including full name, date of birth, race, home address, driver’s license number, permit issue date, and criminal history (if any).
This retaliatory doxxing of gun owners not only violates the Second and Fourth Amendments, the California Constitution, and California law:
“California’s collection and maintenance of that data is an infringement upon the right of Californians to exercise their rights to keep and bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment…
“Californians will be less likely to submit such information to the state in order to exercise their right to keep and bear arms, thus they will face the Hobson’s choice of providing such information to California, or not exercising their right to keep and bear arms…
Plaintiffs and Class Members therefore seek a declaration that California’s wrongful disclosure of this sensitive personal data violated their privacy rights under the United States Constitution, placed their identity, property, and physical safety at risk, and seek an injunction prohibiting California from collecting, maintaining or disclosing such sensitive personal information in connection with any regulation of firearms pursuant to California law.”
SCOTUS granted cert in all four of these decisions, and told the lower courts “You got it wrong in all of these. We’re striking down your opinions. Go do it again, and do it based on the actual text of the Second Amendment and the history/tradition of the right to keep and bear arms.”
Essentially, those courts have to review those state laws in light of Bruen and issue new rulings using the new “text, history, and tradition” framework.
They may try to wriggle out of it (they almost certainly will) but if they obey the Supreme Court, there’s no way any of these state laws can withstand actual Second Amendment scrutiny.
This spells doom for mag bans, assault weapons bans, and public carry bans.
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.
The Supreme Court just handed down a MASSIVE victory for gun rights!
Speaking on behalf of the majority in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen – the first major gun case the Supreme Court has taken in over a decade – Justice Thomas said:
We…now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home… Because the State of New York issues public-carry licenses only when an applicant demonstrates a special need for self-defense, we conclude that the State’s licensing regime violates the Constitution…
The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self defense is not “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.
That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self defense
And in this ruling, the Supreme Court destroyed the so-called “balancing tests” the lower courts have used to basically say that your right to keep and bear arms “isn’t worth insisting on:”
In sum, the Courts of Appeals’ second step is inconsistent with Heller’s historical approach and its rejection of means-end scrutiny. We reiterate that the standard for applying the Second Amendment is as follows: When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.
The implications for gun rights litigation are massive. Only by involving the convoluted “two-step” framework were courts able to wiggle around the plain meaning of the Second Amendment. The plain text of the Second Amendment says that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed – which is exactly what most state gun regulations do. Judges will now have to admit that the Second Amendment means what it says, and rule accordingly. This spells doom for numerous state and federal gun laws and regulations.
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.
Specifically, we are asking the Supreme Court to take Duncan v. Bonta, a case out of the anti-gun 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The 9th Circuit ruled incorrectly that the magazine ban is not a violation of the Second Amendment and that the law should be upheld.
The 9th 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 9th 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.
The Tennessee General Assembly is in the process of passing an anti-free speech bill, and the National Foundation for Gun Rights is preparing to take legal action should it become law.
Under SB1005 (which just passed the Senate this morning), 501(c)4 issue-advocacy nonprofits – like the National Association for Gun Rights – cannot so much as mention a candidate or use his picture within two months of an election or primary without having to disclose their donors to the Tennessee government.
Here’s the language that passed the Senate this morning:
(b) Notwithstanding another law to the contrary, an organization that is tax exempt under United States Internal Revenue Service Code § 501(c)(4), (5), or (6) (26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(4), (5), or (6)) is required to report expenditures, in accordance with § 2-10-105(c)(1) and (h) and file an appointment of treasurer form if:
(1) The organization expends an aggregate total of at least five thousand dollars ($5,000) in organizational funds, moneys, or credits for communications that expressly contain the name or visually depict the likeness of a state or local candidate in a primary or general election; and
(2) Such expenditures or communications occur within sixty (60) calendar days immediately preceding a primary or general election in which the named or visually depicted candidate appears on the ballot.
While the language of the amendment only specifically mentions having to report spending – which is certainly bad enough – the code section referenced (highlighted above) requires reporting of both spending and donations.
In summary? This language is a clever way to require organizations like NAGR to report their donors or cease operating in Tennessee for the two months preceding a primary or general election.
This defies U.S. Supreme Court precedent in both Buckley v. Valeo (1974) and AFPF v. Bonta – the Supreme Court’s most recent free speech ruling in a case we backed just last year.
As we said in the legal warning letter we just sent the Tennessee legislative leadership:
While unconstitutionally burdening the associational rights of Tennesseans, this language is not narrowly tailored to achieve any valid state interest. It blatantly ignores the guiding precedent of Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1974), in so far as it broadly deems non-election-related speech as election-influencing expenditures subject to reporting… The direct result would be the suppression of Tennesseans’ free speech and healthy engagement in the political process – precisely what the Founders designed the First Amendment to protect.
The National Association for Gun Rights absolutely will not expose our donors to harassment, intimidation, or political retaliation by disclosing their identities to either state government officials or to cancel-culture society, and we stand ready to take Tennessee to court to preserve our donors’ privacy and the right of Tennesseans to engage in the political process without threat of retaliation.
You probably saw the news coverage of this — the gun grabbers in San Jose want to make gun owners pay a gun ownership tax.
In other words, they want to tax law-abiding gun owners simply for exercising their Second Amendment rights.
This is just as unthinkable as imposing a “free speech tax” or a “church attendance tax.”
But San Jose’s city council voted UNANIMOUSLY last summer to draft an ordinance that does just that.
They initially backed off and tabled the ordinance after our legal arm – the National Foundation for Gun Rights — sent a cease-and-desist letter threatening to sue them if they passed it.
But on January 25th, 2022, the San Jose city council voted to impose the “gun ownership tax.”
Immediately after the vote, we filed a lawsuit against them to stop this unconstitutional ordinance in its tracks (click here to read it).
This isn’t just about San Jose – or even California.
There is a whole coalition of Bloomberg “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” in cities all across America just waiting to implement this blatantly unconstitutional attack on gun rights if it works in San Jose.
If gun grabbers get away with taxing the right to own a gun, every left-leaning local government across the country will quickly follow.
This will be an expensive, drawn-out legal battle.
Hiring the best lawyers to put the kibosh on this progressive anti-gun nonsense means we’ll be racking up the legal bills quickly.
But we can’t afford not to. To stop it, we have to stop it now.
