United States – -(AmmoLand.com)- When Joe Biden signed the Cornyn-Murphy bill into law, Second Amendment supporters were upset. Given the rank incompetence of the response to the school shooting in Uvalde, they rightly believe that law-abiding gun owners were being scapegoated for a horrific action – whether criminal or driven by insanity – that they did not commit.
That said, the bill was, for the most part, a nothingburger. The federal government will give grants to states that pass so-called “red flag” laws. There is the “closure” of the so-called “boyfriend loophole,” and young adults who purchase firearms will face more scrutiny in background checks.
Senators Burr, Toomey, Blunt, and Portman are retiring and Second Amendment supporters can replace them with more solid supporters of our rights. Lisa Murkowski can be dealt with in the upcoming primary in Alaska. Others can be deal with – if Second Amendment supporters start the process of finding their challengers now.
The grants don’t really change the game on “red flag” laws. States controlled by Second Amendment supporters will likely not pass them, or if they do pass, they will have at least some due-process provisions. States controlled by anti-Second Amendment extremists either already have passed them or will pass them some more.
The worst of these is the so-called “boyfriend loophole” – largely due to how vague it makes defining what can cause a person to lose their Second Amendment rights. It’s a recipe for catching a lot of people into that category, and it could even be retroactive like the Lautenberg Amendment was.
But between New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen and Canigula v. Strom, these “red flag” laws are going to be in serious jeopardy if they do not have sufficient due process protections and provide probable cause. In fact, NYSRPA v. Bruen could eventually strike down the provisions of 18 USC 922 that make restraining orders or misdemeanor convictions for domestic violence a way to render someone a “prohibited person.” Court challenges to those provisions can and should be started in light of those two Supreme Court cases.
In other words, this bill is a nothingburger, and anti-Second Amendment extremists would love to see Second Amendment supporters tear into each other, between those who want to play commissar and those who are rightly focused on bigger threats that exists.
What are those threats? Well, there is the threat of upending our institutions to enact gun control, voiced by Mondaire Jones. There is corporate gun control, including the financial deplatforming of Second Amendment advocacy and gun manufacturers. Those are threats to be addressed and dealing with them is far more important than finger-pointing over this bill.
The worst threat may come from the actions of Kirkland and Ellis. This in an effort to deny us the ability to access the courts with competent legal counsel. These big-time law firms are now saying that Second Amendment supporters (and other conservative causes) are less deserving of legal representation than al-Qaeda. Again, the courts can deal with the provisions of Cornyn-Murphy, but only if Second Amendment supporters have competent lawyers able and willing to take the cases, and the inability to access quality legal representation is a much bigger threat to our rights over the long term than what Biden signed into law.
The Cornyn-Murphy bill was a bad one and wouldn’t have become law under normal circumstances. However, the circumstances after Uvalde were not normal. Second Amendment supporters cannot defeat anti-Second Amendment extremists at the federal, state, and local level via the ballot box if they tear each other apart over a nothingburger and ignore the real threats.
About Harold Hutchison
Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.
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