Brandon Herrera, the firearms manufacturer and YouTube personality known as “The AK Guy,” announced his second campaign for Congress on August 10, 2025, setting up another high-stakes Republican primary battle against Rep. Tony Gonzales (R) in Texas’ sprawling 23rd Congressional District. The rematch promises to rekindle debates over gun rights and party loyalty that nearly cost Gonzales his seat in 2024.
Herrera’s announcement video, which garnered nearly one million views within 48 hours of its release, positions him as a principled pro-gun conservative alternative to Gonzales, whom he labels a “turncoat Republican” for supporting gun control legislation following the Uvalde school shooting. With a massive social media following of 4.4 million YouTube subscribers and an unapologetic pro-Second Amendment platform, Herrera has demonstrated an uncanny ability to mobilize grassroots donors nationwide.
The central issue dividing the candidates remains Gonzales’ June 2022 vote for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major gun control passed by Congress in nearly three decades. Gonzales was the only Texas House Republican to support the measure, which expanded background checks for gun buyers below the age of 21, provided funding for states to implement red flag laws, and strengthened penalties against gun trafficking. His decision followed the May 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, in which a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers and sits within his district.
“If the vote was today on the Safer Communities Act, I would vote twice on it if I could,” Gonzales said in defense of his position, a stance that led to the Texas Republican Party censuring him in March 2023. He became only the second candidate in the party’s history to face such disciplinary action, with the censure resolution pointing to both his gun vote and his support for legislation protecting homosexual marriages.
Herrera has built his political platform around opposition to any compromise on Second Amendment rights, positioning himself as a “no-compromise” advocate who would abolish or significantly restrict the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). His platform calls for national concealed carry reciprocity, blocking all new firearms restrictions, and opposing red flag laws, which he deems as unconstitutional infringements on due process rights.
His 2024 campaign secured endorsements from several prominent conservative figures, including former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, in addition to support from pro-gun organizations such as Gun Owners of America and the National Association for Gun Rights. The Gun Owners of America Political Victory Fund later featured Herrera as a headline speaker at their national convention, cementing his status as a rising figure in the Second Amendment community.
Despite his close loss to Gonzalez, Herrera’s stronger-than-expected performance established him as a major force in Republican politics. His run also validated the strategy of building politically engaged audiences through content creation and subsequently channeling this support base into electoral campaigns. GOA described his 2024 performance “the perfect case study that confirms how important the Second Amendment is as a campaign issue.”
The rematch comes as Gonzales faces continued pressure from the right wing of his party. Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick endorsed Gonzales in 2024, providing crucial establishment support that helped him narrowly survive the challenge.
As the primary approaches, the contest between Gonzales and Herrera will test whether establishment backing and superior fundraising can again overcome grassroots enthusiasm and social media influence in a heated political environment where single issues can determine electoral outcomes.
José Niño is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas. You can contact him via Facebook and X/Twitter. Subscribe to his Substack newsletter by visiting “Jose Nino Unfiltered” on Substack.com.
BELLEVUE, Wash. — The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review in Viramontes v. Cook County, SAF’s challenge to the Cook County, Ill., ban on so-called “assault weapons.”
Originally filed in 2021, the case was put “on hold” during which time the Supreme Court handed down the 2022 Bruen decision, and the Illinois legislature passed the nearly identical statewide ban on “assault weapons,” which SAF has also challenged, in Harrel v. Raoul. SAF is joined in Viramontes by the Firearms Policy Coalition and two private citizens.
“The Supreme Court has indicated its interest in addressing assault weapons bans within the next term or two, and we think this case is a solid vehicle for that review,” said SAF Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. “As Justice Thomas rightly pointed out in his dissent from denial in Snope, the longer SCOTUS delays, the longer millions of Americans are subject to these unconstitutional, categorical bans of the some of the most popular arms in America.”
As noted in the petition: “Cook County’s ‘assault weapons’ laws restrict many perfectly ordinary and common firearms, like the AR-15 rifle. These firearms are not distinct from other rifles in their design or their function. Indeed, the very term ‘assault weapon’ is a political slogan masquerading as a meaningful designation, designed to exploit ‘the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic’ firearms.”
“The idealogues in Cook County wrongfully think that the AR-15, and similar firearms, are not appropriate for self-defense,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb.
“The disenfranchisement of an entire population of residents is an absolute infringement on their Second Amendment rights. We’ve fought this case for far too long and it’s time for the Supreme Court to step in and determine that bans on the AR-15 are unconstitutional.”
For more information, or to register, visit SAF.org.
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 dedicated to safeguarding and promoting the fundamental rights of individuals enshrined in the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. SAF engages in aggressive legal action to ensure the principles of armed self-defense, personal liberty, and the ownership of arms are defended, secured, and restored. Through public education initiatives, SAF teaches the importance of the Second Amendment to promote a society that values and exercises the right to keep and bear arms.
Robert K. Brown has spent decades fighting corruption and standing up for the Second Amendment.
He was one of the first NRA insiders to sound the alarm on waste and mismanagement, long before the scandals that forced Wayne LaPierre to resign. Now he’s stepping forward again—not only as a candidate for the NRA Board of Directors himself, but also by endorsing a slate of reform-minded Patriots ready to clean house and restore the NRA’s credibility.
If you are an NRA Voting Member—that means a paid Life Member or an Annual Member of 5+ years, in good standing—your signature matters.
Call the NRA at 866-672-3000 to confirm your membership number and voting eligibility. (www.nramemberservices.org) Then, e-sign the petitions linked below to help get these candidates on the ballot. Forward this to your fellow NRA members and ask them to do the same.
For years, Brown has warned about the “gross corruption and incompetence” inside the NRA. His blunt emails to fellow board members—exposing millions wasted on sweetheart deals with Ackerman McQueen—proved prophetic. Had leadership listened, the NRA might have avoided the humiliation and legal fallout it faces today.
This election is the chance to finally put reformers in charge. The fight for the Second Amendment deserves a strong, honest, and accountable NRA—not one run by insiders clinging to the status quo.
Take action today. Sign. Share. Stand with Robert K. Brown and these Reform Patriots.
The Catholic School Shooter in Minneapolis Claims that He Would Prefer to Target a “Gun-Free Zone” Because the Victims are Defenseless. “That’s why I and many others like schools so much.”https://t.co/YbJL0I3qnE#2a#guns#gunfreezone
Minneapolis, MN – The manifesto of the Catholic school shooter in Minneapolis has confirmed what gun-rights advocates have been saying for decades: “gun-free zones” are not safe spaces — they are killing zones.
In chilling words, the Minneapolis Trans Shooter explained his choice of target:
“I recently heard a rumor that James Holmes, the Aurora theater shooter, may have chosen venues that were ‘gun-free zones.’ I would probably aim the same way . . . Holmes wanted to make sure his victims would be unarmed. That’s why I and many others like schools so much. At least for me, I am focused on them. Adam Lanza is my reason.”
The shooter’s words were written partly in Russian (Cyrillic), and, the clear message matches what researchers and survivors have long understood: mass killers pick locations where they know nobody can fight back.
*Ammoland News has not been able to confirm every aspect of the translation independently.
Minneapolis School Shooter Chose a Gun-Free Zone Manifesto OriginalMinneapolis School Shooter Chose a Gun-Free Zone Manifesto translation Unverified.
Gun-Free Zones: A Magnet for Attackers
This is not the first time evidence has pointed to killers deliberately targeting so-called “gun-free” areas. From the Aurora movie theater in Colorado, to Sandy Hook, to the more recent Lewiston bowling alley massacre, nearly every modern mass shooting has taken place in a location where law-abiding citizens were banned from carrying firearms.
Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation has put it bluntly: “You’re a sitting duck in a gun-free zone.” Research from the Crime Prevention Research Center backs this up — showing that over 98 percent of mass public shootings since 1950 happened in places where ordinary citizens were prohibited from carrying firearms.
The Minneapolis shooter himself echoed the same logic that killers before him have used: criminals don’t follow rules. Gun bans don’t stop attacks — they advertise a free field of defenseless victims.
A Failed Experiment in “Safety”
Gun-free zones were sold to the public as a way to keep people safe. Instead, they’ve created spaces where innocent lives are sacrificed to politics. Author Dan Wos, writing about repeated tragedies, called them “the biggest culprit of unnecessary and preventable death.”
The failed logic is now tragically clear in Minneapolis: posting a sign or passing a law doesn’t stop evil. It doesn’t protect children. It doesn’t save families. Instead, it creates the illusion of safety while making sure law-abiding citizens are disarmed and helpless when the worst happens.
The Real Answer: Armed Self-Defense
The only proven way to stop mass shootings quickly is through armed resistance. We’ve seen it in Indiana’s Greenwood Park Mall, where a young man carrying legally stopped a shooter before more people died. We’ve seen it in Texas churches, where armed volunteers took down killers in seconds.
History shows the same pattern: when killers meet resistance, the killing ends. When they don’t, the body count rises.
Time to End Gun Free Killing Zones
The Minneapolis shooter’s words are horrific, but they also serve as a grim reminder: gun-free zones do not protect anyone. They attract killers who want easy prey.
Gun-rights advocates have been warning about this for years — and tragically, once again, they’ve been proven right.
If policymakers truly cared about saving lives, they wouldn’t keep doubling down on “gun-free zones.” They would empower ordinary Americans to defend themselves and others. Because when seconds matter, the only real defense against evil is the ability to fight back.
BELLEVUE, Wash. — The U.S. Supreme Court has distributed a Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) case, Madison Lara v. Commissioner Pennsylvania State Police, for conference to be held on Monday, Sept. 29.
The case seeks to vindicate the firearm carry rights of young adults by challenging Pennsylvania state law which prohibits them from carrying firearms during a declared state of emergency.
Joining Second Amendment Foundation in the case are the Firearms Policy Coalition and three individuals.
“We agree with the commonwealth that cert should be granted in this case, and this conference distribution is one step closer to that goal,” said SAF Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. “We are hopeful that the Supreme Court steps in and puts to bed once and for all the question as to whether 18-20-year-olds are part of ‘the People’ who share the same Second Amendment rights as their older counterparts.”
Originally filed in 2021, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has twice ruled in SAF’s favor. After the initial ruling, the commonwealth appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court which, in turn, remanded the case back to the Third Circuit to reconsider in light of the Court’s ruling in Rahimi. The Third Circuit determined that Rahimi had changed nothing about their analysis and once again ruled for SAF and the plaintiffs. After being denied en banc review by the Third Circuit, the commonwealth has once again petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case.
“If you’re an adult, then you should be able to fully exercise your Second Amendment rights, period,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The Third Circuit has made the determination that 18-20-year-olds are members of ‘the People’ more than once, and we are hopeful the Supreme Court will follow suit and determine that adults under 21 have the same rights as other American adults.”
The Second Amendment Foundation (saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group dedicated to safeguarding and promoting the fundamental rights of individuals enshrined in the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. SAF engages in aggressive legal action to ensure the principles of armed self-defense, personal liberty, and the ownership of arms are defended, secured, and restored. Through public education initiatives, SAF teaches the importance of the Second Amendment to promote a society that values and exercises the right to keep and bear arms.
Since President Trump returned to office, we have been in a golden age for gun rights. It’s a welcome change from the nearly fanatical assault on our Second Amendment rights over the past four years.
But there are still challenges: goose-stepping Democrats; a Supreme Court that avoids making decisions that are long overdue; and RINOs, or Republicans-in-name-only.
Texas Senator John Cornyn, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, and Senator Susan Collins of Maine are among the most conspicuous RINOs in Washington, but those at the state level are standing in the way of meaningful gun law reform, as well.
North Carolina has an opportunity to become the 30th constitutional carry state. Even though Josh Stein, the state’s Democratic governor, vetoed Senate Bill 50, the Freedom to Carry North Carolina Act, the state Senate voted to override the veto. Now it’s up to the House where Republicans are technically one vote shy of of an override.
I say ‘technically’ because collecting a Democrat isn’t the only obstacle. There are more than a couple of Republicans who, for some reason, seem to be squeamish about permitless carry.
Far from bringing back the Wild West, constitutional carry doesn’t appear to affect the rate of real violence, i.e., gun-related homicides, very much at all.
CDC data on firearm-related homicides from 2019 to 2023 shows the constitutional carry states’ weighted average rate per 100,000 increased nearly 3% less than the national rate and over 6% less than states with universal background check laws. Moreover, constitutional carry states account for seven of the ten states with the lowest firearm homicide rates.
Perhaps somebody should tell this to the RINOs in the North Carolina legislature and do it quickly; the veto override is scheduled for August 26.
Florida also has a big RINO problem.
In a recent post on X, Luis Valdes, GOA’s state director for Florida, reported State Attorney Thomas Bakkedahl, used material from Everytown for Gun Safety to defend the Sunshine State’s ban on firearm sales to citizens under 21 and open carry. At the same time, Florida’s Attorney General, James Uthmeier, was urging the Supreme Court to grant certiorari to NRA v. Glass, which challenges the under-21 ban. In addition, Uthmeier said the state would not be defending the law.
The FL Republican State Attorney’s Office in @GunOwners v Del Toro (GOA’s Open Carry Lawsuit) is stating to the court that Open Carry has no protection under the Second Amendment.
Uthmeier’s position makes a lot of sense, especially since the Florida ban makes no sense at all. The state stripped more than a million young adults of their Second Amendment rights because one of their cohort – in the entire history of Florida – legally purchased a rifle and used it to commit a mass shooting.
Republican reluctance is also the main reason the laws Florida hysterically enacted after the 2018 Parkland shooting, including the under-21 ban, haven’t been repealed. Florida has a trifecta with a Republican governor and Republicans controlling the legislature. But Republicans themselves have blocked efforts to get the laws off the books.
It’s not like those laws have reduced the number of firearm deaths, or the number of gun-related homicides. While Florida’s population grew 6% between 2018 and 2023, firearm deaths grew 12%.
Every friend of the Second Amendment knows gun control laws never deliver on their promises. In the final analysis, gun control fans are far more interested in taking guns, or at least making them hard to get, than public safety, saving lives, or any of the other excuses. If they were actually interested in reducing “gun violence” they would be pushing vastly different laws.
Now we just need to persuade the RINOs to ignore the gun control hype and hoopla and stand up for the Constitution that every one of them took an oath to defend.
Bill Cawthon first became a gun owner 55 years ago. He has been an active advocate for Americans’ civil liberties for more than a decade. He is the information director for the Second Amendment Society of Texas.
More than 30 percent of American gun owners say they have used a gun in self-defense.
U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)-On July 1, 2025, United States District Court Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo granted summary judgment to Firearms Policy Coalition members to obtain California Concealed Carry Permits. Judge Bencivengo ordered the Plaintiffs and Defendant to submit proposed orders within 30 days. From the order:
For the above reasons, the Court grants Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment as to their facial challenge pursuant to the Second/Fourteenth Amendment and denies the request for relief pursuant to the Privileges and Immunities Clause. The parties are ORDERED to meet and confer and submit a proposed order for an injunction consistent with this order within 30 days.
It is SO ORDERED.
The California Attorney General submitted a proposal requiring applicants to attest, under oath, that they intend to spend time in a California jurisdiction within the next 12 months. The proposal includes four pages of explicit instructions about how non-residents can apply and what laws they must observe.
The plaintiffs submitted an order that says California licensing authorities are permanently enjoined from enforcing Penal Code sections 26150(a)(3) and 26155(a)(3). Judge Bencivengo chose the Firearms Policy Coalition’s order. Here it is:
Defendant Attorney General Rob Bonta; Defendant’s officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys; and any other persons who are in active concert or participation with Defendant, are hereby permanently enjoined from enforcing California Penal Code sections 26150(a)(3) and 26155(a)(3) as to CCW applications submitted by Plaintiff Firearms Policy Coalition’s members who are not residents of California, including the named Individual Plaintiffs.
The order took effect on August 21, 2025.
California vests the issuing of concealed carry permits with sheriffs and police chiefs. The issuance of permits varies enormously between jurisdictions. Thirty years ago, sheriffs and police chiefs could issue permits to anyone they chose. This became a way for people who desired a permit to escape the horribly restrictive policies of sheriffs or police chiefs in large cities. Some counties were issuing thousands of permits to people who did not reside in their jurisdiction. The California legislature passed a statute forbidding the issuance of permits to people who did not live in the jurisdiction of the issuing authority.
The permanent injunction applies only to non-residents of California who are members of the Firearms Policy Coalition. This effectively makes it easier for non-residents of California to obtain California concealed carry permits than for residents of some restrictive areas in California. For example, only 100 to 200 permits were expected to be issued for San Francisco in 2024.
The order does not limit what jurisdiction an applicant may apply in. Placer County California already lists a process for obtaining a non-resident concealed carry permit. It is not clear how non-resident applicants may qualify with their personal handguns.
In the next few months, many applications will be submitted for non-resident concealed carry permits in California. The process may vary significantly by county.
Those counties that cater to non-residents are likely to reap the rewards of their efforts. California concealed carry permits are currently valid for two years. The Crime Prevention Research Center estimates the cost of obtaining a California permit was over $1000 for the initial permit, and over $600 for renewal, in 2023. Some jurisdictions, such as Placer County, appear to charge a couple of hundred dollars less.
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.
TAMPA, Fla. – The National Rifle Association (NRA), joined by three individual members and 2nd Amendment Armory, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging Florida’s three-day waiting period on firearm purchases.
The case, Dunn v. Glass, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida on August 25, 2025.
The Issue at Hand
Florida’s mandatory waiting period dates back to 1998, when voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring a three-day delay between the purchase and delivery of any handgun. In 2018, lawmakers expanded the law to cover all firearms.
Under current law, once a background check is initiated, a buyer must wait at least three days before taking possession of the firearm—even if the check comes back clean instantly. Only concealed carry permit holders, law enforcement, hunters, and those trading in a firearm are exempt.
Critics argue the law functions as a “cooling-off period” rather than a safety measure tied to background checks. Violations can result in felony charges for both buyer and seller.
NRA’s Argument
The plaintiffs argue that the law arbitrarily delays law-abiding citizens from exercising their Second Amendment rights. According to the complaint, the provisions “exist simply to impose an arbitrary delay and a forced period of reflection between purchase and delivery of a firearm—in essence, a ‘cooling-off’ period”.
John Commerford, Executive Director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement:
“For nearly 35 years, law-abiding Floridians have had to endure unconstitutional laws that arbitrarily deny them access to legally purchased firearms. Thanks to the NRA’s landmark Supreme Court victory in NYSRPA v. Bruen, illogical, nonsensical, and unconstitutional gun control laws like this are being thrown out in federal courts across the country. We are confident that our challenge today will be successful and serve as another critical step in rehabilitating Second Amendment rights in the Sunshine State.”
The lawsuit relies heavily on Bruen’s history-and-tradition test, which requires governments to prove that firearm restrictions are consistent with America’s historical tradition of regulation. Plaintiffs argue there is no such tradition of waiting periods, pointing out that they first appeared in California in 1923—more than a century after the ratification of the Second Amendment.
Plaintiffs’ Experiences
The individual NRA members who joined the case—Mitchell Dunn, Josiah Burnham, and Jeremy Hesson—each purchased firearms in recent days but were forced to wait before taking them home, despite clearing background checks immediately. The lawsuit argues these delays constitute ongoing violations of their rights.
2nd Amendment Armory, a retail gun store in Brandon, Florida, is also a plaintiff. The store claims that waiting periods have cost them sales and put them at risk of criminal penalties if they accidentally run afoul of the law.
Legal Relief Sought
The plaintiffs are asking the court for declaratory and injunctive relief to strike down both the constitutional provision and the state statute. They also seek damages and attorney’s fees under federal civil rights law.
If successful, the lawsuit could eliminate Florida’s waiting period entirely, restoring immediate transfers after background checks are completed.
The case also comes just days after the Tenth Circuit struck down New Mexico’s seven-day waiting period in Ortega v. Grisham, another NRA-backed challenge.
BELLEVUE, Wash. — The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) has filed an amicus brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Yukutake v. Lopez, a case challenging Hawaii’s restrictive firearm purchase laws.
Backgrounder: Yukutake v. Lopez
The case of Yukutake v. Lopez comes out of Hawaii, one of the most restrictive states in the nation when it comes to firearm ownership. Two gun owners, backed by Second Amendment advocates, challenged Hawaii’s unusual handgun purchase laws:
30-Day Purchase Limit – State law required a handgun permit to expire after just 10 days (later stretched to 30), meaning if you didn’t finalize the sale within that window, you had to start the whole process over again.
Five-Day Police Inspection – After buying a gun, owners were forced to physically bring it to the police station within five days for “inspection,” even if it came from a federally licensed dealer.
A federal district court struck down both rules, calling them unconstitutional burdens on the right to keep and bear arms. In March 2025, a Ninth Circuit panel agreed, citing the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision and finding no historical tradition for Hawaii’s mandates.
But in July 2025, the Ninth Circuit took the rare step of vacating that win and ordering a rehearing by the full court (en banc). That means the fight isn’t over.
The Second Amendment Foundation and other groups are urging the court to uphold the earlier ruling, arguing that Hawaii’s laws are outliers with no roots in America’s firearm traditions.
At its heart, Yukutake v. Lopez asks a simple but powerful question: Can a state invent arbitrary deadlines and inspection rules that effectively ration the exercise of a constitutional right?
While the Plaintiffs prevailed before a Ninth Circuit three-judge panel, the case is now being reheard en banc. SAF is joined by the California Rifle & Pistol Association and the Second Amendment Law Center.
“Our brief contends that the Ninth Circuit’s practice of routinely granting en banc rehearing to overturn Second Amendment victories undermines public confidence in the judicial system,” said SAF Director of Legal Research and Education Kostas Moros. “We also argue that the court should reverse its erroneous interest-balancing standard set in B&L Productions, Inc. v. Newsom, which improperly revives a test rejected by the Supreme Court in Bruen. Hawaii’s laws clearly implicate the plain text of the Second Amendment, and without a historical basis, they cannot stand.”
The amicus brief argues that Hawaii statutes, which impose a 30-day time limit to purchase a firearm after receiving a permit and require police inspection of legally purchased firearms within five days, violate the Second Amendment. These laws lack any historical tradition of support and place undue burdens on law-abiding citizens exercising their constitutional rights. The brief is also critical of the Ninth Circuit’s now routine practice of rehearing almost all Second Amendment victories en banc only to reverse the decisions.
“This amicus brief is part of SAF’s ongoing mission to defend, secure and restore the Second Amendment rights of Hawaii residents,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “These arbitrary restrictions in Hawaii are unique and burdensome with no parallel in other states. We urge the Ninth Circuit to either reinstate the three-judge panel’s ruling striking down these laws or rule in favor of the plaintiffs, ensuring that the Second Amendment is treated with the respect it deserves.”
For more information, or to register, visit SAF.org.
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 dedicated to safeguarding and promoting the fundamental rights of individuals enshrined in the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. SAF engages in aggressive legal action to ensure the principles of armed self-defense, personal liberty, and the ownership of arms are defended, secured, and restored. Through public education initiatives, SAF teaches the importance of the Second Amendment to promote a society that values and exercises the right to keep and bear arms.
Justice Neil Gorsuch recently laid down the law for federal judges who think they can ignore the Supreme Court. “Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” he wrote, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. It was the third time in just weeks the Court had to slap down judges who refused to follow precedent on Trump administration policies.
That’s the Supreme Court doing its job—reminding lower courts that the Constitution sets up a hierarchy, and their rulings aren’t optional. The justices were blunt: when the Court decides an issue, it “commands respect.”
So here’s the question every gun owner should be asking: why doesn’t the Supreme Court show the same urgency when states openly defy its Second Amendment rulings?
Bruen: A Victory Undermined
In NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022), the Court struck down New York’s century-old “proper cause” requirement for carry permits. The message was simple: the right to armed self-defense doesn’t stop at your doorstep. Yet New York responded by rewriting its law to impose “good moral character” tests and declaring vast swaths of the state “sensitive places” where permits are worthless.
New Jersey, Maryland, and California followed the same playbook—pretend compliance while effectively restoring the very restrictions Bruen outlawed. Instead of defending its own precedent, the Supreme Court shrugged and let cases like Antonyuk v. James languish.
No emergency orders, no sharp rebukes, no defense of citizens caught in the middle.
A Double Standard on Rights
The contrast is glaring. When lower courts blocked Trump’s move to cut NIH diversity grants, SCOTUS rushed in. When a district judge tried to override deportation policies the Court had already cleared, Justice Elena Kagan herself said, “I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this Court has stayed.”
But when states openly defy Bruen, the Court looks the other way. If NIH grants affecting a narrow portion of the population are important enough to warrant emergency intervention, why aren’t the rights of millions of Americans trying to defend themselves in dangerous cities?
The Second Amendment is not a second-class right. Yet the Supreme Court’s silence has effectively treated it as one.
Rights Delayed Are Rights Denied
Every day the Court fails to act, New Yorkers, Californians, and others are forced to navigate an unconstitutional maze just to carry a gun legally. Katz warned that “a right delayed is a right denied.” He’s right.
If the Court won’t enforce its own decisions, what’s left of Heller, McDonald, or Bruen? Without consequences, anti-gun states are emboldened. They’ll keep layering on new restrictions, betting that the Court will dodge again.
The Founders made clear that the right to bear arms is the ultimate safeguard against tyranny. Leaving it to rot through inaction invites exactly the kind of creeping despotism they feared.
Time for the Court to Step Up
Justice Gorsuch is correct: judges can’t pick and choose which Supreme Court decisions to obey. That principle doesn’t stop at NIH grants or immigration—it applies to the Second Amendment, too.
The Supreme Court cannot let its landmark rulings be reduced to “meaningless words on paper.” If it won’t defend the Second Amendment with the same vigor it defends bureaucratic decisions, then states will keep trampling the rights of their citizens.
It’s time for the Court to step up. If SCOTUS doesn’t enforce Bruen, then the Second Amendment will already be halfway gone.
About Tred Law
Tred Law is your everyday patriot with a deep love for this country and a no-compromise approach to the Second Amendment. He does not write articles for Ammoland every week, but when he does write, it is usually about liberals Fing with his right to keep and bear arms.
They left out “confiscation.” If they ever get these done and they’ll always be back for more. (Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions/Facebook)
U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “The results are in! Our new National Survey of Gun Policy reveals that Americans broadly agree on many gun violence prevention policies,” Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions exclaims on X.com. “Check out the 2025 survey findings.”
They present those over at their website, where we find the Center is part of the “Bloomberg School of Public Health,” as in anti-gun (except for the government and his law-skirting security team) billionaire Michael Bloomberg. The use of the pejorative term “gun violence” to stigmatize the inanimate object instead of the willful human aggressor is our first clue as to what they mean by “solutions” and “prevention.”
We’re told it’s a “nationally representative survey” which “found wide support for gun violence prevention policies across political lines and among both gun owners and non-owners.” We’re told they’ve been doing this since 2013. What we’re not told is any meaningful metric to prove any of their “solutions” have prevented anything except citizens being able to exercise a supposedly unalienable right with a government mandate that it “shall not be infringed.”
The questions, asked of “2,977 respondents, 1,001 gun owners and 1,976 non-gun owners and 959 Republicans and 1,419 Democrats” need to be viewed with two further caveats: The Bloombergians make no attempt on this page to share how the questions were worded (because doing so differently could produce different results), or to establish actual knowledge the respondents had – as opposed to what they’ve been told by the overwhelmingly prohibition-supporting media, and by the Democrat Party.
Why, if it’s “representative,” does the survey include significantly more Democrats than Republicans, especially after the popular and electoral victories Second Amendment-proclaiming Donald Trump attained over gun prohibitionist Kamala Harris? And don’t overlook that just because someone is a gun owner doesn’t automatically put them in the pro-Second Amendment camp, as the Fudds comprising Giffords’ “Gun Owners for Safety” amply demonstrate.
But on to the claims…
We’re told that “74% of Americans support laws that require a person to lock up the guns in their home when not in use.” What they don’t tell us, and presumably didn’t tell the respondents, is that they also want ammunition locked separately from firearms, meaning if quick access is needed to defend against an intruder, he’ll be on you before you can load your gun. We’ve also seen cases where trained children have successfully defended themselves against intruders, and cases where they could not, with tragically outrageous results. It would also be helpful to see what percentage of homes where untrained children access unsecured guns include criminal residents.
“Only 24% of Americans support allowing a person to carry a loaded firearm in public, without obtaining a permit or license,” the survey report declares, going on to justify further infringements in “sensitive locations such as polling places, protests, or establishments that serve alcohol.” What it does not declare is that “ there are no documented instances of people being shot at polling places in the United States in recent history,” that peaceable armed rallies are the norm (it’s those anti-gun “vigils” that seem to be lethal), that it is the gun controllers who demand a violent response to treat armed Americans exercising the First and Second Amendments as “terrorists” and “enemy combatants,” and that an untold number of gun owners have both gun safes and liquor cabinets and the two coexist just fine.
“Permissive open and concealed carry laws … have been shown to increase gun violence,” the Center then lies. They did it before, when the effects of Ohio passing permitless carry did not match the hysterical “blood in the streets” predictions, and claimed “firearm assaults rose about 10% in states that relaxed restrictions on concealed carry weapons.”
Not by citizens who weren’t “prohibited persons” it didn’t. But conflating correlation with causation is an old trick prohibitionists use on those who don’t know they’re being conned. Which doesn’t really seem to be the case with Americans, as it’s now the norm in the majority of states, 29 at last count.
“72% of Americans support requiring a person to obtain a license from a local law enforcement agency before buying a gun,” the Center then insists. Just like the Founders intended when they ratified the Bill of Rights, right? Prior restraint on a right by a government which has no legitimate Constitutional authority to mandate it, and built-in registration so if it changes its mind, it knows just where to go to confiscate guns.
“72% of Americans support funding community-based gun violence prevention programs that provide outreach, conflict mediation, and social support for those at high risk of gun violence,” the Center continues.
Sure, like we’ve seen has worked so well in all the Democrat cities that spend tax plunder on avoiding the reality that “68% of released prisoners were arrested within 3 years, 79% within 6 years, and 83% within 9 years.”
Tell it to prosecutors George Gascón and Pamela Price, too permissive even for urban California Democrats, and then tell us again how “representative” Americans overwhelmingly agree with George Soros’ picks.
“77% of Americans support allowing family members to ask the court to temporarily remove guns from a relative who is at risk of harming themselves or others,” the Center then asserts, without addressing what should be a key concern: They haven’t been proven to be at risk of anything and afforded full due process. And if the person is a danger, removing his guns — but not him — ignores the reality that releasing such a person back into society puts everyone else at risk, and it makes a much sense as opening a tiger’s cage. That and the majority of criminals have no problem obtaining a gun through other than “legal” channels.
Despite that, the Center says “Americans” overwhelmingly want to extend who can initiate gun confiscations to “clinicians” (77%– no HIPAA Privacy Rule violations there, right?), and “law enforcement” (76%– no police state fears there, either?).
And not to overlook a pool of citizens to disarm, the survey concludes a whopping “82% of Americans support prohibiting a person subject to a temporary domestic violence protection order from having a gun for the duration of the order.” Without even being charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one, and with the motives of the initiating spouse not even examined for common factors in divorce like jealousy, spite, hatred, jockeying for financial settlements, influencing the child custody process, etc.
It’s truly an Alice in Wonderland absurdity, illustrated by the Queen of Hearts ordering “Sentence first — verdict afterwards.” And the Johns Hopkins gun-grabbers want that codified into law.
That and more. These are just the citizen disarmament edicts they listed in this survey. If they were ever achieved, there would be a new list, because they also want “universal background checks,” “assault weapon bans,” “ghost gun” bans, no carry/”gun-free” zones, “waiting periods,” and more, culminating in no guns.
Just look at their “co-director,” Josh Horwitz, a career gun prohibitionist ostensibly leading a team of “scientists” (and talk about Astroturf: just look at all those people on the payroll). I’ve had run-ins with this character before, when he ganged up on me with half-a-dozen antis to argue for Virginia Tech disarmament in The New York Times (but comment posters overwhelmingly agreed they failed), when his now defunct Coalition to Stop Gun Violence actually lied about me, when CSGV added anti-white racism to misogyny, and plenty more.
Be aware that before they called themselves CSGV, they were the National Coalition to Ban Handguns. That’s what they still want and where they’re going with this, and it won’t end there.
Despite lying denials to the contrary, yes, of course they’re talking about taking your guns. That’s always been the agenda.
Johns Hopkins has once more beclowned itself as a purveyor of agendized “junk science,” and provides yet another object lesson in why “research” by gunquacks needs to continually be exposed for the wholesale hysteria-inducing fraud that it is.
We’ll end with Josh engaging in more of it, trying to convince the ignorant that “gun violence” is a “critical public health issue.” If that’s the case, why are “outbreaks” for the most part limited to “a small set of urban areas, and even in those counties, murders are concentrated in small areas inside them”? Why haven’t you, I, and the millions of gun ownership advocates who have proven ourselves on the whole to be the most peaceable population on the planet caught the bug?
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.
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