Armed Defender Ends Attack on the Road, iStock-1354934183
In a chilling home invasion incident, a Michigan family narrowly escaped a tragic fate thanks to the swift and decisive actions of an armed homeowner. Ricardo Perez Castillo, a 24-year-old man who confessed to wanting to kill the entire family, broke into a Rockford residence on June 15th. However, his sinister plans were thwarted by a vigilant homeowner who exercised his right to self-defense, illustrating the critical importance of legal firearm ownership.
The home invasion occurred in the early hours of the morning, around 3 a.m., as detailed in court records. Castillo, armed with a knife he found in the family’s kitchen, stripped down to his underwear and T-shirt before proceeding upstairs with the intent to kill the entire family. His first target was an 11-year-old girl who was sleeping in a room with a friend.
Castillo’s depraved actions were cut short when the girl’s screams woke the homeowner, who courageously confronted Castillo and held him at gunpoint until police arrived.
This incident starkly highlights the necessity of having the means to protect oneself, and one’s loved ones from imminent danger. The homeowner’s quick thinking and readiness to defend his family prevented a tragedy that could have claimed multiple lives. Castillo’s arrest at the scene by Kent County sheriff’s deputies further underscores the effectiveness of armed self-defense in stopping violent criminals in their tracks long before the police can be on the scene.
Ricardo Castillo now faces an array of serious charges, including attempted murder, first-degree home invasion, assault with intent to commit criminal sexual conduct, and carrying a weapon with unlawful intent. His intentions were nothing short of horrifying, as he admitted to planning to kill the young girl and subsequently commit necrophilic acts.
Such a disturbing revelation reinforces the argument that law-abiding citizens must retain the right to bear arms to protect themselves from such monstrous threats.
Michelle LaJoye-Young of the Kent County Sheriff’s Office commented on the case, noting that Castillo was fully aware of his actions and had planned the attack to some extent. “He seemed to be very aware of where he was, he knew what steps he took to get into that house. He very clearly articulated an intent to be there,” LaJoye-Young stated, emphasizing the premeditated nature of Castillo’s actions.
The homeowner’s heroic actions serve as a powerful reminder of the importance of the Second Amendment. This incident illustrates how responsible gun ownership can be a vital line of defense against violent crime. Without the ability to arm himself, the homeowner would have been powerless against Castillo’s brutal assault, potentially leading to a devastating outcome for the entire family.
Castillo remains in the Kent County Jail on a $2 million bond and is scheduled to appear in court for a probable cause hearing on June 26, followed by a preliminary examination on July 3. The legal proceedings will determine whether there is sufficient evidence to bind the case over for trial, but the facts already presented paint a clear picture of a planned and deliberate attack.
The right to bear arms is not merely a constitutional privilege but a practical necessity in a world where threats can emerge without warning. As this Rockford homeowner demonstrated, being armed can mean the difference between life and death, ensuring that justice is served and innocent lives are safeguarded.
June 15, 2024: A Rockford, MI, dad awoke to his 11-year-old daughter screaming and armed himself before confronting a pants-less intruder who was stabbing the girl. The dad stopped the assault and held the intruder at gunpoint until police arrived. https://t.co/HemoJMvRBy
— Defensive Gun Use Tracker (@DailyDGU) June 18, 2024
Much has been written about the recent SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) Rahimi decision. I might as well add my two bits. I have read the 8-1 decision, the several concurring opinions, the dissenting opinion by Justice Thomas, and many articles about the decision.
In Rahimi, SCOTUS was asked if the federal law is unconstitutional that disarms people because of domestic violence.
First, Rahimi was a very bad guy with a history of violence with firearms. SCOTUS was never going to let Rahimi off the federal hook. As the legal saying goes, bad cases (bad facts) make bad laws (bad decisions). Anti-gun US Attorney General Merrick Garland was counting on this and hoped this case would be decided in a way to erode the previous Bruen decision and allow much gun control under some new standard.
Second, the 8-1 Rahimi decision was very narrow in scope and pertained only to the exact facts set in the case. That is, disarmament by law is only allowed if a court-determined finding is made that the subject is prone to violence and only if the disarmament is limited in time.
Third, and maybe most importantly, SCOTUS is quite aware that too many inferior courts have been thumbing their noses at SCOTUS when refusing to apply the important new standard for evaluating RKBA restrictions under the Bruen decision. I’m sure that SCOTUS has been waiting for an opportunity to chastise rebellious inferior courts for ignoring the methodology required by Bruen – the text, history, and tradition standard of review rather than the old, replaced interest-balancing standard.
SCOTUS availed itself of the Rahimi opportunity to jerk the chain of lower courts on this issue. Essentially, SCOTUS said that RKBA restrictions might just possibly be constitutional, but ONLY if a court gets to that approval by using the new Bruen methodology. This came through so plainly in the Rahimi decision that even liberal lower court judges should be able to understand the mandate. SCOTUS will hold lower courts’ feet to the fire with enforcing the Bruen evaluation standard for any RKBA restrictions.
This means that magazine bans and semi-auto bans are almost certainly DOA at SCOTUS.
Fourth, there were some very useful admissions made by liberal justices in joining the Court’s primary decision and concurring opinions by liberal justices. These will be helpful in future Second Amendment cases at SCOTUS.
Finally, something stood out to me in this case, which I had not seen others comment on. That is the “concurring” (but nevertheless adverse) opinion by new, Biden-appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. In that opinion, Jackson comes across as what one would expect of a DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) pick: whiny and weak for the task.
In her separate opinion, Jackson raises two related complaints.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is shown here in a C-SPAN screen snip during confirmation hearings.
The first is her recycled complaint that judges are not historians and cannot be expected to decide cases requiring an examination of history.
Bull! Judges are also not physicians or financiers, but they commonly umpire medical and financial cases. It is the task of counsel for parties to the case to do relevant research, bring in experts, and present that to the court. All a judge must do is read the briefs presented by counsel, not be a certified historian.
Second, Jackson complains that judges are too busy to dig into history to make correct decisions. Again, they don’t have to become history professors. They only need to read the briefs presented by counsel. The attorneys representing the parties will do the heavy lifting of history research based on actual historians’ work. If counsels’ briefs don’t provide enough history, a judge can ask for further, specific briefing. If a judge cannot read the briefs to do what he or she is paid for, to protect the liberties of the people from government encroachment, they should resign and allow a replacement to get the necessary work done.
Jackson and her law clerks embarrass themselves and SCOTUS with the frivolous content of her opinion.
BTW, I agree with Justice Thomas in his lone dissent, that the historical analogs provided by the government are inadequate to justify the restrictions on the RKBA presented in Rahimi. However, there is no way SCOTUS was going to let very bad guy Rahimi off the hook. Bad cases just make for bad law.
Longtime Montana political observer and participant Gary Marbut is president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, the primary political advocate for Montana gun owners.
Even with his conviction, Hunter Biden continues to enjoy the privileges of power. (Joe & Hunter Biden IMG Public Domain acaben, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons)
“Hunter Biden requests new federal gun trial,” Reuters reported Monday. “The president’s son had unsuccessfully argued that the law he was charged under was unconstitutionally vague and violated his right to gun ownership under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
Now, his lawyers are arguing on the technicality that “federal appeals court did not give the trial court a formal green light to proceed after dismissing his appeals.”
The case is one this column has been following since November 1, 2020, and while others had already reported on Biden’s sister-in-law-turned-lover Hallie throwing his gun away in a market trash bin, AmmoLand first made the connection that in order to legally buy a gun, he would have had to deny being an unlawful user of controlled substances on the ATF Form 4473 Firearm Transaction Record, where making false statements is a felony.
Even if the new trial tactic works and delays things further, it will still just kick the can down the road, albeit it can possibly delay proceedings and results until after the November election. But ultimately, unless power and privilege can provide another “out” never applied to the masses, Biden will have to face the results of the Rahimi decision, wherein the Supreme Court upheld, by eight to one, the law prohibiting firearms to those under domestic violence restraining orders.
Chief Justice John Roberts was stretching it– there’s a world of difference between “misusing” and “possessing.” There was nothing comparable to a restraining order at the time of ratification — those who received due process and were convicted were removed from society.
The other media-identified “conservatives” on the court straying from Second Amendment adherence, the “good” Bruen judges, have been exhibiting other opinions that are cause for gun owner concern of late. Amy Coney Barrett recently expressed doubts on “relying… on history and tradition” in a trademark case. Between that, Neil Gorsuch playing for the other team on deporting illegal aliens, Samuel Alito giving “how to ban” instructions in his Cargill (bump stock case) concurrence, and Brett Kavanaugh looking the Bruen gift horse in the mouth, it’s becoming more and more apparent that lone Rahimi dissenter Clarence Thomas, target of continued Democrat attacks aimed at forcing him off the bench, is the only one on the court who consistently “gets it.”
The upshot of all this is that when Hunter Biden finally has no place left to turn, he’ll be facing Supreme Court precedent that indicates those who fall under the statutory definition can be barred from having guns and punished for violating the prohibition.
No fair, cries far-left Jamie Raskin, ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee and as committed an enemy of the Second Amendment as ever broke his oath to uphold the Constitution. While disparaging IRS whistleblowers testifying on alleged misconduct in Biden investigations, Raskin trivialized the gun prosecution as a “rich guy exercising his Second Amendment rights” and declared that Hunter “received no special treatment.”
With all the ways Raskin and his comrades have proposed to try and put their countrymen behind bars for claiming what the Framers would have considered their birthrights, you’d think someone posing as a full-on, woke DEI social justice jihadist would be outraged by the nepotism and “white privilege” Biden avails himself of that are not available to “lesser” Americans, and particularly to minorities and women.
Cases in point, Raskin should explain his contention to his minority constituents and then square that against the prosecutions of:
Deja Taylor, a young black mother “charged with being an unlawful user of a controlled substance in possession of a firearm and making a false statement during the purchase of a firearm.”
Jakobe McCray Woullard, 19, who “pled guilty … to being an unlawful user of a controlled substance in possession of a firearm.” Woullard was found to be in possession of “one” round of ammunition, he was charged for that and sentenced to “115 months of confinement on his new offense and 24 months for violating his federal supervised release” for his previous offense of smoking marijuana and being in possession of a firearm.
Kenta Quenshawn Hopson Jr., a “known marijuana user [who] marked that he was not a marijuana user on the form.” He’s also black.
Of course, Biden has received, and will continue to receive “special treatment.” Start with the fact that none of the above defendants had anywhere near the wherewithal to mount the legal defenses he has. And if the subject is violating what the gun grabbers falsely call “commonsense gun safety laws,” there’s more, And it involves more than Hunter.
Using John Roberts’ Rahimi criteria as a guide, Biden wasn’t just “possessing,” but as his conduct of being armed while illegally drugged demonstrates, he was actively “misusing.”
Then there’s the question of how Halle Biden got hold of his gun, from the glove compartment of Hunter’s truck. He wasn’t complying with the prohibitionist demand for “safe storage,” and punishing owners for unsecured guns being stolen from cars is another Democrat priority being passed by states with an eye toward doing it everywhere, in Everytown.
And then there’s the question of Halle Biden taking the gun without permission, that is, stealing it, in effect also doing an unlawful transfer, and then illegally transporting it to the market trash bin where she further went on to endanger the public. What must Deja Taylor think of that?
The Democrat agenda on guns is shown for the absurd, discriminatory, and evil farce that it is when the biggest citizen disarmament proponents out there are either making excuses for Hunter Biden or ignoring the story altogether, and you can prove that to yourself: Find a statement from the major gun grab groups, Everytown, its wholly owned Moms Demand subsidiary, Giffords, Brady, Marx for Our Lives, any of them, condemning Hunter Biden’s flagrant violation of everything they would impose on the rest of us under force of government arms. Find their demands that he be prosecuted and sentenced to the full extent of the law.
While the three felonies Biden was convicted of carry a maximum sentence of more than two dozen years behind bars, the sentencing guideline, former federal prosecutor Tim Jansen told CNN, is between 15 and 21 months in prison. The actual sentence, however, will up to the judge.
Thus the demand for a new trial that he can afford, thanks to a “career” made possible by family connections.
One would think if the collectivists really believed all their B.S. about equity, instead of trying to eviscerate the Second Amendment they would demand it as the most egalitarian power sharing arrangement ever devised. That they don’t should tell anyone with eyes all they need to see about those who want their guns.
And one would think that a rational society, after seeing everything that doesn’t work, would eventually come to the conclusion that prohibitions not only don’t work, they make things worse, and that if someone has proven, with full due process, that they can’t be trusted with a gun, the only solution is to keep them separated from those they would victimize.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
Joe Biden has done more damage to this country than any president in American history.
We are embroiled in conflicts and proxy wars around the world. Other nations no longer respect us. Our once-great economy is in shambles. Millions of undocumented and unvetted immigrants illegally cross our borders. Trust and confidence in government is at an all-time low, and violent crime is skyrocketing. Meanwhile, Biden, his handlers, and the gun-ban industry are inching closer toward their ultimate goal of total civilian disarmament.
There is a growing sense of unease in the country. For many, our nearly 250-year-old Republic seems to be teetering toward disaster.
Long story short, we are not safe, and Biden’s policies are making us less safe.
One thing is certain: Even if Biden loses his reelection bid, it will take years to undo the damage he has caused. We will be living with the threats Biden has created long after he has shuffled back to his beach chair in Delaware.
Recognize the Threat
American War Weapons Lost in Afghanistan
Never before have Americans faced the variety of threats we see now. We could be incinerated in a flash because our enemies possess nuclear weapons, from ICBMs to small, portable tactical nukes. Iran has moved closer to achieving a nuclear weapon under Biden than ever before.
The millions of illegal aliens that Biden has allowed across our borders include gang members, cartel gunmen and actual terrorists who are members of international terrorist groups such as ISIS-K, the jihadist group now active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which now has access to 176 artillery pieces, 64,363 belt-fed machine guns, 126,295 handguns and of course 358,530 select-fire assault rifles – realassault weapons – that were left behind during Biden’s hasty and ill-conceived retreat.
No one within the Administration has ever commented on the more than two divisions of Chinese military-age males who infiltrated our country unabated. Their marching orders and ultimate goals are known only to Chinese Communist Party leaders in Beijing.
Taking a page from Fidel Castro’s playbook, Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro emptied his prisons and asylums and pointed his inmates north. Americans are being raped and murdered solely because the Biden-Harris administration allowed these monsters into the country. None were vetted, as the administration falsely claimed, because, of course, we cannot background check anyone from Venezuela. Their government does not accept queries from ICE.
Even our finest warfighters are worried.
“We are gravely concerned by the current heightened risk of terrorist attacks against targets inside the United States and both U.S. and allied interests abroad. Our complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, without a viable stay-behind or over-the-horizon counterterrorism and intelligence capability to suppress threats, has created a vacuum in the region in which anti-American terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, are flourishing once again,” the Special Operation Association of America, which represents thousands of Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Marine Raiders, Air Force Air Commandos, and other special operators, wrote in a recent statement.
Trust and confidence in government is at an all-time low. Our military is struggling to recruit, and most law enforcement agencies cannot find, much less hire, qualified applicants. As a result, violent crime is skyrocketing, which Biden strenuously denies. He points to juked stats and faulty data as proof, but Americans know the truth. They see it with their own eyes.
Many Americans now realize no one is coming to help. They are their own First Responders, which explains why gun sales remain strong.
Stay informed
It is not easy to track events within our borders or worldwide, but it is vital. Any intelligence, much less accurate threat analysis, is necessary but difficult to obtain. The corporate media has proven time and time again that they cannot be trusted to speak the truth. They haven’t even connected the dots on the spate of illegal aliens who are committing rapes and murders nationwide, and they refuse to tie this growing crime trend to the Biden-Harris administration.
That could harm Biden’s reelection chances – which they will never do. Trust the legacy media at your own peril.
The Annual Threat Assessment, or ATA, used to be a must-read document. It is the Intelligence Community’s yearly report and analysis of worldwide threats to our national security, an “unclassified summary of the Intelligence Community’s evaluation of current threats to U.S. national security, including cyber and technological threats, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, crime, environmental and natural resources issues, and economic issues.” Unfortunately, since Biden took office, the intelligence contained in the ATA appears to have been watered down.
There are websites like AmmoLand News and individuals who speak the truth, despite attempts by the Administration to marginalize them as a fringe group and censor them online. Seek these sites out before they’re shadow-banned or completely silenced.
A good example is HeyJackass!, which tracks shootings, murders, and other crimes in the Chicago area and is a must-read for anyone headed to the Windy City. Since Jan. 1, according to the website, 242 people have been shot and killed, and 1,161 have been shot and wounded.
Another intel source is the Crime Prevention Research Center, which is operated by Dr. John R. Lott, Jr. Any crime data from the CPRC or vetted by Dr. Lott can be trusted.
Seek competent instruction
Take a basic pistol course if you don’t know how to operate a handgun. If you want to carry a concealed firearm, take a concealed-carry class. But if you want to learn how to defend yourself and your family against real threats, you should seek competent instruction from experienced people who specialize in such training.
Fortunately, we live in the Golden Age of firearm instruction. The Global War on Terror produced hundreds of extremely qualified tactical instructors who don’t teach from a textbook or bother with certificates or certifications. They’re too busy teaching their students how to win gunfights. Delta veteran Bob Keller was one of the first to offer his real-world training and experience to students.
A Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) certification is a good place to learn how to control a bleed. TCCC was designed by the Department of Defense for forces deploying overseas. There are three tiers. Tier 1 can be taught in just eight hours. The D-Dey Response Group teaches TCCC and other tac-med courses, and their instructors are all former Special Forces medics (18-Deltas) with real-world experience.
(Retired Delta operator Bob Keller of Gamut Resolutions. Photo courtesy of Gamut resolutions.)
Protect the Second Amendment
The Second Amendment is constantly under attack and must be protected. Its 27 words prevent our republic from becoming a dictatorship, and there is a direct correlation between it and your personal safety and security.
No president in American history has done more to damage and circumvent the Second Amendment than Joe Biden. Curiously, no one from the corporate media has ever bothered to ask him why he wants all of us disarmed.
Biden and his handlers created a taxpayer-funded office inside the White House, which is specifically designed to infringe upon our Second Amendment rights. Not only does the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention create national gun-control policy, such as the Surgeon General’s deranged declaration that “gun violence” somehow constitutes a public health crisis, the office serves as a clearinghouse of sorts, and pushes its unconstitutional gun-control schemes out to the states.
If we lose the Second Amendment, or if Biden is able to weaken it further, our other rights, especially the First Amendment, will be immediately vulnerable.
Prepare for the Worst
FEMA recommends Americans should stockpile enough nonperishable food items to last “several days” in the event of an emergency or natural disaster. The agency also recommends whistles, dust masks and moist towelettes. Somehow, arms and ammunition didn’t make the list.
The truth is, we all know what we need to survive: Food, potable water, water purification equipment, First Aid supplies, communications systems, and, in the worst-case scenario, arms and ammunition.
I would add one item to the list: Body armor, preferably NIJ Level IV (now known as NIJ RF3) plates capable of stopping rifle rounds.
The author’s Universal Armor Carrier by Otte Gear. (Author’s photo.)
This country has survived a Civil War, two World Wars, and the Great Depression. We can make it through anything as long as we remain vigilant and zealously safeguard our personal security and our constitutional rights.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst, and remember: We’ve gotten this far because we’re resilient, and even with our faults and internal disagreements, this place we call home is far better than anywhere else.
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.
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.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a wonderful dissent in the Rahimi case, released on June 21, 2024, almost exactly two years after the clear and well-written Bruen opinion.
The Rahimi opinion has been released by the Supreme Court. It is an eight-to-one decision with Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting. In spite of the terrible facts and unsympathetic defendant in the case, Rahimi was not a significant win for those who want the American population disarmed. It was a very narrow decision based on the narrow facts of the case, so the opinion, while not wonderful, is not as damaging as some think.
The Supreme Court opinion, written by Chief Justice Roberts, is narrow, as applied to the Rahimi case. It is extremely limited. From the opinion, page 1:
Held: When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment. Pp. 5–17.
(a) Since the Founding, the Nation’s firearm laws have included regulations to stop individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms. As applied to the facts here, Section 922(g)(8) fits within this tradition.
Justice Clarence Thomas may be the most well-reasoned and disciplined Justice on the Supreme Court. In his dissenting opinion on Rahimi, Thomas shows the weakness of the majority opinion. His dissent gives Constitutionalists and Originalists a roadmap of how to argue decisions on other cases going forward, including future challenges to the ban on guns coming from domestic violence restraining orders, indeed from the entire Lautenberg Amendment disaster.
The dissent makes clear that no historical tradition of firearms regulation is consistent with U. S. C. §922(g)(8). From the Dissent, page 1:
A firearm regulation that falls within the Second Amendment’s plain text is unconstitutional unless it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Not a single historical regulation justifies the statute at issue, 18U. S. C. §922(g)(8).
Justice Thomas shows how 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(8) indiscriminately bans numerous individuals from possessing firearms without due process. From the Dissent:
In addition, §922(g)(8) strips an individual of his ability to possess firearms and ammunition without any due process.1
Justice Thomas shows the various historical statutes used in the majority opinion do not fit 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(8), starting on page 7 of the Dissent:
The Government does not offer a single historical regulation that is relevantly similar to §922(g)(8). As the Court has explained, the “central considerations” when comparing modern and historical regulations are whether the regulations “impose a comparable burden” that is “comparably justified.” Id., at 29. The Government offers only two categories of evidence that are even within the ballpark of §922(g)(8)’s burden and justification: English laws disarming persons “dangerous” to the peace of the kingdom, and commentary discussing peaceable citizens bearing arms. Neither category ultimately does the job.
Justice Thomas explains how the majority opinion threatens the Second Amendment on page 31 of the Dissent:
The Court rightly rejects the Government’s approach by concluding that any modern regulation must be justified by specific historical regulations. See ante, at 10–15. But, the Court should remain wary of any theory in the future that would exchange the Second Amendment’s boundary line—“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”—for vague (and dubious) principles with contours defined by whoever happens to be in power.
On the same page, Justice Thomas explains why the Rahimi case is not about Rahimi as an individual but about protecting Second Amendment rights from encroachment. He notes Rahimi could have been effectively disarmed using several other processes, particularly criminal statutes. From the Dissent:
This case is not about whether States can disarm people who threaten others. States have a ready mechanism for disarming anyone who uses a firearm to threaten physical violence: criminal prosecution. Most States, includingTexas, classify aggravated assault as a felony, punishable by up to 20 years’ imprisonment. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. §§22.02(b), 12.33 (West 2019 and Supp. 2023). Assuming C. M.’s allegations could be proved, Texas could have convicted and imprisoned Rahimi for every one of his alleged acts. Thus, the question before us is not whether Rahimi and others like him can be disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment. Instead, the question is whether the Government can strip the Second Amendment right of any-one subject to a protective order—even if he has never been accused or convicted of a crime.
Justice Thomas’ arguments in the dissent are persuasive. Unfortunately, eight other Justices found the facts of the particular Rahimi case to be more persuasive of the necessity of temporarily disarming Rahimi. Hard cases make bad laws, as they say. The majority opinion is severely limited to mitigate the damage that Justice Thomas so eloquently warns of.
Here are the limits put in place on the applicability of the Rahimi opinion going forward:
The opinion is limited as applied to the Rahimi case and no others.
The Opinion is limited to determining if all cases, in all instances under 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(8) are always unconstitutional. The Opinion does not rule out the possibility major portions of 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(8) are unconstitutional, and may be found to be so in future cases.
The Opinion only applies to Section 922(g)(8)(C)(i). It does not apply to the rest of the 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(8), which allows for constitutional challenges to those areas.
The Opinion keeps the Bruen test in place as the means of judging Second Amendment cases, including future challenges to other parts of 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(8).
The Opinion did not deal with due process issues. Those are left for future decisions. Due process was acknowledged to be important, but not in the Rahimi case. Rahimi did not contest the facts in the restraining order, or contest the restraining order.
While this correspondent would have preferred Justice Thomas’ dissent to be the majority opinion, it was not to be. The majority opinion is not an unmitigated disaster for Constitutionalists and Originalists. It upholds Bruen and leaves the door open for several pending cases to clarify and restore more rights protected by the Second Amendment, where states are defying the Supreme Court ruling in Bruen.
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
The State of Ohio successfully defended the State’s preemption statute in an important appellate court win yesterday.
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. In 2018 and again in 2022, Ohio expanded the preemption law to forbid more local regulations and protect knives in addition to firearms.
The Supreme Court of Ohio upheld the original 2007 preemption law in a 2010 case, when the City of Cleveland argued that it infringes on municipal home rule authority. Now, the City of Cincinnati is relying on the same argument, in addition to free speech and separation of powers arguments, to challenge the 2018 and 2022 amendments.
The trial court ruled in favor of Cincinnati and preliminarily enjoined the 2018 and 2022 amendments.
But this week, the First District Court of Appeals reversed that decision and held that under the 2010 Cleveland case, the 2018 and 2022 amendments do not violate Ohio’s Constitution, thereby keeping the entire preemption law intact.
The Court of Appeals’ ruling is a significant win for Ohioans and the right to keep and bear arms.
About NRA-ILA:
Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess, and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org
Two years ago, New York Times columnist David French complains, the Supreme Court “created a jurisprudential mess that scrambled American gun laws” by saying they must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Last week, French suggests, the court drew back from the precipice when it upheld a federal law that disarms people who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders.
That take is somewhat misleading since all eight justices who voted to uphold that law plausibly claimed to be following the approach the Court prescribed in the 2022 case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
Yet French is by no means the only Second Amendment supporter who thinks that test is impractical.
Bruen explicitly rejected “interest-balancing” tests that weigh a gun law’s burdens against its purported benefits — an approach that gave judges a license to approve any regulations they deemed sensible. But critics of Bruen argue that it replaced one kind of unbridled discretion with another, inviting judges to express their personal biases when they decide whether a challenged law is “relevantly similar” to a “historical analogue” identified by the government.
Writing for the majority last week in United States v. Rahimi, Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that “our tradition of firearm regulation allows the Government to disarm individuals who present a credible threat to the physical safety of others” — a description that applies to at least some people covered by the federal ban, including the defendant in this case. Roberts saw a precedent for that policy in “surety” laws, which required allegedly threatening individuals to post bonds that would be forfeited if they “broke the peace.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion in Bruen and the sole dissent in Rahimi, conceded that surety laws “shared a common justification” with the statute that disarms people based on restraining orders. But he argued that they were not “relevantly similar” because “they imposed a far less onerous burden.”
Despite this disagreement, Roberts et al. reaffirmed the Bruen test, noting that it does not demand a “dead ringer” or “historical twin,” a requirement that would “suggest a law trapped in amber.” And the fact that the justices disagreed about how to apply a constitutional standard, which happens all the time, does not by itself mean this one is unworkable.
In a concurring opinion, however, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that “lower courts are struggling” to apply Bruen consistently, “diverging in both approach and outcome.” A new study by three law professors — Rebecca Brown, Lee Epstein, and Mitu Gulati — reinforces that impression.
After Bruen, they report, the number of Second Amendment challenges heard by federal courts rose, and so did the share that were successful. But they found that “judicial discretion, as measured by partisanship, has not been constrained.”
To the contrary, Brown et al. say, the correspondence between judges’ conclusions and the party of the president who appointed them has increased. They conclude that Bruen “places considerable unguided discretion in judges, inviting partisan bias.”
The Cato Institute’s Clark Neily, who submitted a brief in Rahimi criticizing the challenged law on due process grounds, argues that the Supreme Court, despite its rejection of “interest-balancing” analysis, is taking essentially the same approach under the guise of “text/history/tradition.” He predicts that “pragmatism will play an enormous, if unacknowledged, role in driving case outcomes.”
It nevertheless seems clear that Bruen has constrained judicial discretion in at least some cases. Confronted by a wave of state laws that banned guns from long lists of “sensitive places,” for example, federal judges predictably disagreed about the validity of the government’s historical analogies, but there was some encouraging consistency between Republican and Democratic appointees.
Despite its drawbacks, the Bruen test has been undeniably effective in defeating constitutionally dubious firearm regulations. Whether that counts in its favor depends on whether you view the Second Amendment as an inconvenient relic or a vital guarantee of a fundamental right.
About Jacob Sullum
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @JacobSullum. During two decades in journalism, he has relentlessly skewered authoritarians of the left and the right, making the case for shrinking the realm of politics and expanding the realm of individual choice. Jacobs’ work appears here at AmmoLand News through a license with Creators Syndicate.
A declaration by Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy that “gun violence” is a public health crisis overlooks one thing: The numbers suggest this isn’t a First Aid problem. (Dave Workman)
While the establishment media was having a field day with the declaration by Biden administration Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy that “gun violence” is a “public health crisis,” and the Giffords gun prohibition lobbying group was making the most of it at Newsweek, there was just one problem: Numbers.
Buried in the Newsweek article, which quoted Giffords stating it has long “advocated for a public health approach to gun violence,” was this observation:
“The 10 states with the strongest gun laws, in ranking order, were California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland and Colorado. The states with the least stringent gun laws were Wyoming, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Idaho, Montana, Mississippi, South Dakota, Kansas and Arizona.
“The report gave California the highest ranking for gun law strictness, citing strengthened concealed carry laws and $3 million of investment in gun violence research, among other reasons.”
But a check with some other sources revealed that in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, California reported the highest number of homicides in the country—2,206 according to the state Department of Justice—with a moderate percentage of gun ownership: 28.3 percent, according to data posted by Statista and the World Population Review.
New Jersey posted 254 murders, yet the state has only a 14.7 percent rate of gun ownership.
Illinois reported 881 homicides that year, with a 27.8 percent rate of gun ownership, followed by New York, with 762 slayings and a 19.9 percent gun ownership rate.
Maryland reported 511 murders, and then state has a 30.2 percent gun ownership rate, according to the World Population Review.
Connecticut posted 136 slayings, with 23.6 percent of residents owning guns, while Massachusetts logged 148 killings and 14.7 percent of the population owning guns.
If strict gun control worked, including reducing the number of gun owners, none of these states should be racking up these kinds of body counts. Nobody seems interested in broaching that subject.
There are outliers, including Texas, where 2,020 people were murdered in 2022, and there is a 45.7 percent rate of gun ownership.
But the Giffords group pointed to the bottom ten states with the weakest gun laws, as though they had a problem. The numbers tell a different story, and ironically, Texas is not at the bottom of the list. The Newsweek article includes a map of the U.S. and Texas is listed as Number 31 out of 50 for strength of gun laws.
Montana, which has the highest rate of gun ownership of any state at 66.3 percent, reported 49 homicides in 2022, according to the Statista data. Wyoming, where 66.2 percent of the residents have a gun, reported a paltry 14 slayings that year. Idaho is another state with lots of guns—60.1 percent of the population is armed—and not many murders: 53 in 2022. Yet in none of those states are the streets, or even the unpaved roads, awash in the blood of murder victims.
Indeed, according to the popular websiteHeyjackass.com, which monitors Chicago homicides, in 2022 the Windy City logged 738 murders of which 666 involved firearms. That is more than the combined totals Arizona, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, with two other states listed for weak gun laws—Kansas (126) and South Dakota (39)—thrown in for good measure.
Arizona, which has a 46.3 percent gun ownership rate, posted 456 homicides in 2022.
It should be noted that all of the states at the bottom of the Giffords list for “weak” gun laws are “Constitutional Carry” states.
As quoted by Newsweek, former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords stated, “I have seen firsthand how shootings are a major threat to Americans’ lives and well-being, and our leaders must view the problem as the public health crisis it is. There are many powerful forces who downplay the threat of gun violence because the status quo benefits them financially or politically, and I’m grateful that Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy had the courage to do what he knows is best for our nation’s health.”
It’s not “downplaying” gun-related violence but rather putting it into perspective. Strong gun control laws, as illustrated above, do not translate to lower body counts. Neither do lower rates of gun ownership. The gun ban lobby avoids addressing this conundrum, because it does not follow their narrative. If stricter gun laws worked, along with a lower percentage of people with guns, the number—not the rate—of murders should go down.
“Dr. Murthy is simply Joe Biden’s mouthpiece,” Gottlieb observed. “The real crisis in America is the failed policies of the Biden administration. Instead of focusing on locking up felons and disarming criminal gangs, he wants to disarm millions of honest gun owners whose only crime is that we exercise our right to keep and bear arms.”
CCRKBA has some 650,000 members and supporters across the country and is one of the nation’s leading grassroots gun rights organizations. Gottlieb said the real problem with violent crime in this country is that it is a “symptom of failed leadership.”
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
The Second Amendment Foundation has filed an appellants brief with the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the continuing challenge of the ban on so-called “assault weapons” in Cook County, Illinois.
Joining SAF in its appeal from U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois are two private citizens, Cutberto Viramontes and Christopher Khaya. They are represented by attorneys David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson and William V. Bergstrom with Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, Washington, D.C. The case, filed originally in 2021, is known as Viramontes v. Cook County.
“The question presented in this case is straightforward,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “whether the Second Amendment permits the government to ban the best-selling rifles in America and similar semiautomatic firearms erroneously labeled as ‘assault weapons.’ We maintain the answer to that clearly is no.”
“Modern semiautomatic rifles are commonly used for all kinds of lawful purposes,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “While millions of Americans own tens of millions of them, such rifles are used in a tiny fraction of all homicides, according to FBI data. They are used for self-defense, hunting, predator control, competition and recreation, and there can be no doubt they are protected by the Second Amendment.”
The case has actually been “on hold” for the past couple of years, during which the Supreme Court handed down the 2022 Bruen decision, and the Illinois Legislature passed a statewide ban on so-called “assault weapons” in January 2023. Plaintiffs had asked the court to stay the case pending resolution of the Illinois ban’s constitutionality, but the court declined to grant a stay.
“It’s time for a resolution to this case,” Kraut observed.
Second Amendment Foundation
The Second Amendment Foundation (saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 720,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared that “gun violence” constitutes a public health crisis Tuesday but cited fake mass-shooting data from the long-debunked Gun Violence Archive to support his spurious claims.
“While mass shooting deaths represent only about 1% of all firearm‑related deaths in the U.S., the number of mass shooting incidents is increasing. According to data published by Gun Violence Archive, the U.S. experienced more than 600 mass shooting incidents each year between 2020 and 2023, compared to an average of less than 400 annual mass shooting incidents between 2015 and 2018,” the Surgeon General’s advisory states.
In his report, Murthy cites data from the Gun Violence Archive more than four times.
Founded in 2013, the GVA quickly became the administration’s source of choice for mass-shooting data because they hype the numbers. The small nonprofit came up with its own extremely broad definition of a mass shooting, which says anytime four or more people are killed or even slightly wounded with a firearm regardless of the circumstances, it’s a mass shooting. For example, according to the GVA there were 417 mass shootings in 2019. The FBI says there were 30, because it uses a much narrower and more realistic definition, which excludes gang-related and drug-related shootings, which the GVA includes in its data.
Murthy is not the only member of the Biden-Harris administration to use fake data from the GVA. Biden and his handlers have cited GVA’s mass-shooting data throughout his presidency in speeches, written statements and social media.
In an editorial published May 14, 2023, by USA TODAY and reprinted in scores of newspapers across the country, titled, “President Biden: I’m doing everything I can to reduce gun violence, but Congress must do more,” Biden stressed the need for more Red flag laws, advocated for universal background checks and called on Congress to ban “assault weapons” and standard-capacity magazines, stating: “For God’s sake, do something.”
But then there was this: “We need to do more. In the year after the Buffalo tragedy, our country has experienced more than 650 mass shootings and well over 40,000 deaths due to gun violence, according to one analysis.”
When Biden’s staff announced the creation of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention last May, they cited GVA data that claimed there had been 500 mass shooting in the country and 118 firearm-related deaths per day, which Biden said was “far too high.”
In a statement released in February after the post-Superbowl shooting, Biden again cited GVA’s mass shooting data, claiming, “We’ve now had more mass shootings in 2024 than there have been days in the year.”
In a previous interview with the Second Amendment Foundation, Mark Bryant, the GVA’s executive director, took no responsibility for the misuse of his flawed data. When asked if he believed the average news consumer even considers domestic violence or gang warfare when they hear the term mass shooting, Bryant said, “I don’t know. I know what we want to do is provide numbers and let the journalists, advocates and ‘congress critters’ look at the data, glean details and drill down on it.”
Bryant has claimed that he is “anti-violence” and not anti-gun, but has publicly lobbied for stricter gun control, including standard-capacity magazine bans.
“I think magazine capacity is an issue that should be addressed,” Bryant said in a previous interview. “You don’t need 30-round mags or a 60-round drum. While they are great ‘get off’ tools, they’re part of a hobby, not part of the Second Amendment.”
Other inaccuracies
Using fake GVA data is not the only error in Murthy’s report.
“Since 2020, firearm‑related injury has been the leading cause of death for U.S. children and adolescents (ages 1–19), surpassing motor vehicle crashes, cancer, and drug overdose and poisoning,” the report states.
This claim has also been debunked and proven to be nothing more than a frequently cited White House talking point. The numbers only work if you define everyone under 20 years old as children, and for 17-year-olds and younger, the leading cause of death is suffocation.
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.
In recent years, many on the political left had encouraged use of the politically correct term “justice-involved individual” to refer to those convicted of, even serious, crimes.
That is, until May 30. Upon that date, the great and the good rediscovered the pejorative “felon.” While their cynical use of the term is meant to conjure ideas of dangerousness and other severe negative connotations, such notions at this late date are dubious. Simply put, felonies aren’t what they used to be.
Traditionally, there were nine common law felonies. These included: murder, rape, manslaughter, robbery, sodomy, larceny, arson, mayhem, and burglary. Note that all but one of these crimes involves dangerous conduct involving direct attacks on another person or their property. The consensual form of the remaining crime has been abolished (Lawrence v. Texas (2003)). The remaining common law felonies are simple, have tangible victims, and are understandable to all but the most deranged as severe wrongdoing.
With the United States’ ever-growing reams of federal and state statutes and the bureaucrat-made law in the Code of Federal Regulations and state analogues accompanying it, this is no longer the case.
The 2021 Supreme Court case Lange v. California involved the question of whether, under the Fourth Amendment, a law enforcement officer may always pursue an individual suspected of having committed a misdemeanor into a home without obtaining a warrant. The Court held that such a categorical exemption to the warrant requirement was impermissible.
During oral arguments there was much discussion on how to treat misdemeanor versus felonious conduct in such circumstances. Understanding the creeping expansion of the definition of felony, Gorsuch defended broad Fourth Amendment protections, noting,
we live in a world in which everything has been criminalized. And some professors have even opined that there’s not an American alive who hasn’t committed a felony in some – under some state law.
Gorsuch went on to explain,
what qualified as a felony at common law was — were very few crimes and they were all punished by the death penalty usually, and today pretty much again anything or everything can be called a felony.
The ridiculous nature of modern felonies should be easy for gun owners to grasp.
Consider the ATF’s bump stock rule. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently pointed out in his opinion in Garland v. Cargill (2024), for years bump stocks were sold in the U.S. with the blessing of the ATF. Then, in 2017 ATF reversed its own regulatory guidance and purported to outlaw the devices as “machineguns.” Under ATF’s rule, those who did not dispose of their lawfully-acquired property would commit a felony. It didn’t matter if a person was peaceful and otherwise law-abiding, mere continued possession of a lawfully-acquired item could subject them to a felony conviction.
As it turns out, ATF’s recent reinterpretation of federal statute was bogus all along and was thus overturned by the Supreme Court. However, the federal government’s behavior in this case is a testament to just how frivolous they are in concocting and defending new nonviolent felonies.
This wild expansion of felonies has a significant impact on Second Amendment rights.
Generally, federal law prohibits felons from possessing firearms. The Gun Control Act of 1968, as codified at 18 USC 922(g)(1), prohibits firearm possession by any person “who has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.”
The meaning of that language is pared down in 18 USC 921(a)(20), which states,
(20) The term “crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” does not include–
(A) any Federal or State offenses pertaining to antitrust violations, unfair trade practices, restraints of trade, or other similar offenses relating to the regulation of business practices, or
(B) any State offense classified by the laws of the State as a misdemeanor and punishable by a term of imprisonment of two years or less.
As one can see from 18 USC 921(a)(20)(A), even in 1968 lawmakers understood that it didn’t make sense to categorically prohibit anyone convicted of any felony, such as the obviously nonviolent, from possessing firearms. However, with such a limited carveout, those lawmakers perhaps failed to anticipate the sprawling growth of government.
The U.S. Supreme Court rulings in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen (2022) made clear that that the Second Amendment right and impositions on it must be considered in light of the nation’s historical tradition. Given the current reality around felonies, and just how much it differs from the historic record, there has been renewed interest in cabining the 18 USC 922(g)(1) prohibition and state analogues to those convicted of violent crimes or at least crimes indicative of some amount of dangerousness.
In 2009, the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy published a widely circulated item written by former Deputy Assistant Attorney General C. Kevin Marshall with a title that posed the reasonable question “Why Can’t Martha Stewart Have a Gun?” In it Marshall explained,
In 2004, domestic diva Martha Stewart was convicted of obstruction of justice, making false statements, and two counts of conspiracy in connection with dubious stock transactions. Although sentenced to only five months in jail plus a period of supervised release, she risked a much harsher punishment. Because she was convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison, federal law bans her from having any gun.
…
Is the public safer now that Martha Stewart is completely and permanently disarmed? More to the point, how could such a ban be constitutional, now that the Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, not only has confirmed that the Second Amendment secures a personal right to keep and bear arms, but also has emphasized its historical tie to the right of self‐defense?
Marshall endorses a regime that would limit firearm prohibitions to those convicted of crimes of violence. The author noted,
the “crime of violence” concept developed then tracks, both historically and rationally, the basis on which a disability should proceed constitutionally: by focusing on convictions indicating that one actually poses some danger of physically harming others rather than simply being dishonest or otherwise unsavory.
Disabilities based on a conviction ought to rest on a justification sufficient to override or qualify the right of self‐defense underlying the Second Amendment, and the “crime of violence” concept does so.
Likewise, in 2019 Justice Amy Coney Barrett, then a judge on U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, suggested that firearm possession prohibitions should be tied to dangerousness while dissenting in the case Kanter v. Barr. The case involved the Second Amendment rights of an individual with a felony mail fraud conviction stemming from the almost comically nonviolent crime of selling Medicare non-compliant therapeutic shoe inserts.
Taking issue with the categorical ban on felons possessing firearms, Barrett explained,
History is consistent with common sense: it demonstrates that legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns. But that power extends only to people who are dangerous. Founding-era legislatures did not strip felons of the right to bear arms simply because of their status as felons.
The federal and state governments’ campaigns to criminalize everything, that Justice Neil Gorsuch so aptly pointed out, show little sign of abating. This, along with the decisions in Heller and Bruen, should prompt a serious examination as to the legality and efficacy of blanket prohibitions on felons possessing firearms.
About NRA-ILA:
Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess, and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org
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