WASHINGTON Justice Amy Coney Barrett is just starting to make her mark at the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday, her vote flipped the courts approach to restrictions on attendance at religious services during the coronavirus pandemic. While Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was alive, the court had allowed such limits, in California and Nevada, by 5 to 4 votes. After Justice Barrett succeeded her, she joined the courts four most conservative justices to strike down restrictions in New York.

Those same four justices are now on high alert for a promising case in which to expand Second Amendment rights, having written repeatedly and emphatically about the courts failure to take gun rights seriously. Justice Barrett seems poised to supply the fifth vote they need.

A Second Amendment case decided last week by the federal appeals court in Philadelphia is a promising candidate for Supreme Court review, not least because it presents an issue on which Justice Barrett has already taken a stand.

It concerns Lisa M. Folajtar, who would like to buy a gun. But she is a felon, having pleaded guilty to tax evasion, which means under federal law she may not possess firearms.

She sued, arguing that the law violated her Second Amendment rights. A divided three-judge panel of appeals court rejected her challenge, saying that committing a serious crime has consequences. It can lead to losing the right to vote, to serve on a jury or to have a gun.

The ruling adopted the position of the Trump Justice Department. The right to keep and bear arms is analogous to other civic rights that have historically been subject to forfeiture by individuals convicted of crimes, including the right to vote, the right to serve on a jury and the right to hold public office, lawyers for Attorney General William P. Barr told the appeals court.

In dissent, Judge Stephanos Bibas, a former law professor appointed to the court by President Trump (and the author of a scathing decision on Friday rejecting the presidents challenge to the election results in Pennsylvania), wrote that the framers of the Constitution would not have allowed lawmakers to bar felons convicted of nonviolent crimes from owning guns.

Lisa Folajtar asks us to treat her as an equal member of society, he wrote. Though her tax-fraud conviction affects some of her privileges, it does not change her right to keep and bear arms.

Judge Bibas wrote that his analysis had drawn heavily from a dissent last year in a similar case concerning a man convicted of mail fraud.

That dissent was written by Justice Barrett when she was a judge on the federal appeals court in Chicago. The law forbidding people with felony convictions from owning guns, she wrote, should not apply when the crimes in question were nonviolent.

History does not support the proposition that felons lose their Second Amendment rights solely because of their status as felons, she wrote. But it does support the proposition that the state can take the right to bear arms away from a category of people that it deems dangerous.

Voting and jury service are different, she wrote, because those are rights that depend on civic virtue.

The Supreme Court has not issued a major Second Amendment decision since a pair of rulings, in 2008 and 2010, established an individual right for law-abiding citizens to keep guns in their homes for self-defense. Beyond that, the justices have said almost nothing about the scope of the right, and lower courts have sustained many kinds of gun control laws.

Before Justice Barretts arrival, the courts four most conservative justices had repeatedly written that the court should return to the subject of the Second Amendment

In 2017, for instance, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, wrote that they had detected a distressing trend: the treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right.

For those of us who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous, Justice Thomas wrote. But the framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense.

In June, however, the court turned down some 10 appeals in Second Amendment cases. Since it takes only four votes to grant review, there is good reason to think that the courts conservative wing was unsure it could secure Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.s vote.

Justice Barretts arrival changes the calculus. Should Ms. Folajtar appeal to the Supreme Court, it is a good bet that Justice Barrett will find her arguments persuasive.

Still, the 2008 decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, would seem to create a hurdle for Ms. Folajtar. The majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, included an important limiting passage, the price of Justice Anthony M. Kennedys crucial fifth vote.

Nothing in our opinion, Justice Scalia wrote, should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons.

Last year, the court agreed to hear a challenge to a New York City gun-control ordinance. But it ended up dismissing the case in April, after the city repealed the ordinance.

Dissenting from that ruling, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. noted that the Heller decision recognized that history supported the constitutionality of some laws limiting the right to possess a firearm, including ones prohibiting possession by felons and other dangerous individuals.

That last phrase, which did not appear in the earlier decision, may be significant. In shifting the focus to dangerousness, it seemed to open the door to the position taken by Justice Barrett.

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Justice Barretts Vote Could Tilt the Supreme Court on Gun Rights - The New York Times

Manuel Ramirez asks, How can a person travel from one state into another with a fully loaded assault rifle claim he was defending himself?

Ive a question or two for you, too, Manuel: How can you call an AR-15 an assault rifle when it is not one? Or do looks mean more to you than facts?

You say that the Second Amendment doesnt say anything about shooting your gun in the air or shooting your neighbor. Are you sure you want to go there? Nowhere in the Constitution does it even hint at abortion or homosexuality being protected.

You suggest that The government should raise the age limit to those individuals who insist on owning a weapon to, say, 35 years old. Interesting comment, when one realizes that those who argued the Constitution, and then wrote it and the Amendments, including the Second, had other opinions.

Richard Henry Lee, for instance: A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves and include all men capable of bearing arms. Back then, men would have included those equal in age to Kyle Rittenhouse.

How about Tench Coxe? Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? He also said this: Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American.

I could go on all day with examples, but Id rather point out what you didnt: the police, whose job is to do precisely what Kyle was attempting to do (and more), were ordered to stand down by those in authority, which allowed free reign to rioters/looters/arsonists hiding behind our First Amendment right to peacefully protest. Had that not happened, both in Kenosha and other cities around the country, we would never have even heard of Kyle.

John Babush

Big Rock

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Defending the 2nd Amendment | The Herald-News - The Herald-News

Should we be allowed to carry a handgun in New Jersey? The NRA is suing to find out. The lawsuit brought on by the National Rifle Associations' institute for legislative action has partnered with The Association of New Jersey's rifle and pistol clubs tochallenge New Jersey's restrictive concealed carry laws.

According to the article;

"New Jerseys may-issue statute also requires that people justify their need to carry. And even though the Supreme Court said that self-defense is 'the central component' of the Second Amendment, the desire to defend yourself is insufficient justification under New Jersey law. This makes it all but impossible for law-abiding gun owners to receive a permit, which is required to lawfully carry a handgun in New Jersey."

Times are changing. Violent crime is up in New Jersey, Trenton has beaten its own record for homicides. We see peaceful protests turn violent across the country. We hear of cities and states wanting to defund the police. New Jersey Democrats say they would never do that, but people say a lot of things they would never do, that is until they were done.

What would be so wrong with people being able to carry a gun in New Jersey? Right now, only the bad guys and very few people who clear a lot of obstacles can do it. As for the responsible gun owners, they need a really good reason, and protecting your loved ones and property simply doesn't qualify.

Now I'm not saying that everyone in New Jersey should carry a gun. What I am saying is that responsible gun owners should have the option. That's assuming the irresponsible gun owners who don't obey the law already have one if they so choose.

Would you feel safer in a bank if you saw people carrying guns if someone were to pull a gun and try to rob it? Changes are most of said people are trained in gun use. Perhaps if a possible robber saw those same people the robbery would be averted. The same could be said for any type of shootings.

If people were allowed to carry handguns in New Jersey you might see more people taking an interest in learning how to use them. Education as we all know is the best weapon.

Once upon a time we never would have thought of the idea of being able to carry a handgun in New Jersey. then again, once upon a time we never would have thought about the idea of legalized marijuana, but here we are.

Would I carry a gun if it were legal? Probably not, but it would be nice to know that I have that option to protect my family. Would you?

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Steve Trevelise. Any opinions expressed are Steve's own.Steve Trevelise is on New Jersey 101.5 Monday-Thursday from 7pm-11pm. Follow him on Twitter@realstevetrev.

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Should you be allowed to carry a handgun in New Jersey? (Opinion) - New Jersey 101.5 FM Radio

Dec. 2, 2020 4:33 pm ET

Regarding your editorial Fireworks Over Religious Liberty (Nov. 27): The governor of New York and mayor of New York City continue to engage in a pattern of promulgating unconstitutional orders, then withdrawing them when the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case. It worked for Mayor Bill de Blasio on gun control in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York but not for Gov. Andrew Cuomo in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo. So much for that legal gamesmanship with vital constitutional issues.

Unfortunately for Gov. Cuomo in the diocese case, the makeup of the Supreme Court changed and he now has to dine on the proverbial crow despite his dismissive attitude about the courts decision. Attempting to render the central issue in the case moot by withdrawing the offensive action will no longer be tolerated when a strong constitutional insult is involved. From the main unsigned opinion to the concurring opinions, the majority has made clear it will no longer tolerate the offensive attempt to dodge the crucial constitutional issue. The temporary injunction handed down by the Supreme Court was very important and clips Gov. Cuomos ability to promulgate offensive orders unreasonably restrictive of religious rights. All states take notice. Also, Justice Brett Kavanaugh has recently given notice that the Second Amendment issues may soon be revisited.

Christopher R. Wood

Chester, N.J.

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The Court, Coronavirus and the Constitution - The Wall Street Journal

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On a frigid Martin Luther King Jr. Day earlier this year, Philip Van Cleave brought out the big guns to Richmond. As he stood on the steps of the Virginia State Capitol, Van Cleavea 68-year-old balding and mustachioed software programmerdelivered a stern warning to the Democrats who had recently gained control of the state government: Were here today to remind Governor [Ralph] Northam and the general assembly that the last election was not a referendum on gun control. In front of him, an ocean of pro-gun protesters whooped in solidarity. Nearly all were armed, many gripping AR-15-style rifles or other assault weapons. A good number were decked out in paramilitary outfits and tactical gear. Confederate and Gadsden flags waved high and wide.

It was a scene that once would have been credited to the National Rifle Associationthe nations oldest gun rights group, which, over the past several decades, has inflamed and radicalized a broad coalition of conservative gun owners through alarmist messaging, especially during the Obama administration, and cemented itself as a formidable political force. But the NRA has since dwindled in power, and the rally was the work of Van Cleaves Virginia Citizens Defense League, a no-compromise, far-right gun rights group that he once boasted was proud to have been labeled an extremist organization.

Over the past 19 years, VCDLs Lobby Day protests in Richmondan annual event on MLK Day when special interest groups, predominantly ones with conservative ties, advocate to the General Assemblywere relatively mild affairs, with about 600 to 800 attendees. But this year it attracted more than 20,000, and the days leading up to the protest put the state on edge. The FBI arrested members of the neo-Nazi group the Base, who had allegedly stockpiled firearms and ammunition, discussed plans to recruit members at the rally to help kickstart a race war, and talked about committing acts of violence against people of color. Northam declared a state of emergency to ban weapons on the grounds of the state capitol building, but the crowd was so large that most armed attendees couldnt even fit in the area, instead spilling into the side streets of downtown Richmond. Alex Jones, the notorious conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder, drove around the streets in an armored vehicle screaming through a bullhorn, If they try to take our firearms, 1776 will commence again!

The rally was a bellwether: the sudden downfall of the nations most powerful gun group and the rise of more radical pro-gun organizations and militias seeking to take its place. Since 2016, the NRA has seen a steady decline in its ranks. Meanwhile, theres been a boon in membership for more extreme groups like the VCDL and the Second Amendment Foundation, which recently filed a number of lawsuits challenging state gun control laws, and the National Association for Gun Rights, which paints itself as a more conservative alternative to the NRA.

Theres no doubt a void to be filled by the NRA, but its unclear what groups will dominate. Weve got 100 million gun owners in this country, says Joshua Powell, the NRA directors former chief of staff. Whether its the NRA or some other group, somebodys going to have to fill those shoes. Powell was fired from the NRA last year amid allegations of sexual harassment, and hes since published a memoir detailing the behind-the-scenes corruption within the organization. It is important to have an institution that represents Second Amendment supporters, gun owners, Powell adds. This is part and parcel to the fabric of our country. The Second Amendment is not going anywhere. Van Cleave is also confident that there will be a group, or a splintered coalition of smaller groups, to step into the NRAs shoes. Theres not going to be a void there, he says. Somebodys going to fill that.

The NRAs downward spiral started with its greatest accomplishment: spending $54 million to help elect Donald Trump in 2016. But the first signs of financial trouble emerged the following year, which the NRA ended with a $1.1 million shortfall thanks to shrinking member revenue, probably because it no longer had Barack Obama as a liberal boogeyman to fundraise off of, as well as an increase in spending. The next year, 2018, saw an increase in revenue from membership dues, but the nonprofit again spent more money than it brought in, digging an even deeper hole of $10.8 million in the red, as its debts piled up.

The dam broke for the NRA in 2019 when, just before its annual meeting and convention in Indianapolis, the New Yorker and the Trace published a bombshell report detailing allegations of self-dealing among its top vendors, gratuitous spending, sweetheart deals, and other financial improprieties among the groups leadershipchiefly its executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, who has led the organization since 1991. At the meeting, then-NRA President Oliver North unsuccessfully tried to oust LaPierre and demanded his resignation.

LaPierre survived the uprising, as a majority of the NRAs 76-member board backed him unanimously and North resigned. But the damage was done. An anonymous source leaked financial documents that exposed years of corruption, including a damning letter that North penned. In a court filing from later last year Norths lawyers said that LaPierre demonstrating his total dictatorial control over the NRAstopped all of Norths inquiries and prevented others at the NRA from looking into the concerns that North raised.

Days after Norths attempted coup against LaPierre, New York Attorney General Letitia James opened an investigation into the NRAs tax-exempt status.After spending a year investigating, in August her office filed a massive lawsuit against the NRA, accusing it of widespread corruption and seeking to dissolve the organization in its entirety. The NRAs influence has been so powerful that the organization went unchecked for decades while top executives funneled millions into their own pockets, James said in statement announcing the lawsuit. The NRA is fraught with fraud and abuse, which is whywe seek to dissolve the NRA, because no organization is above the law. The lawsuit has since been tied up in a number of challenges by the NRAs legal team. After years of denying allegations of financial misconduct, the NRA finally admitted in its most recent tax filing that the organization only recently became aware of a significant diversion of its assets between LaPierre and five former executives.

The NRA has always been notoriously cagey about its membership numbers, but its tax returns and other financial documents offer a glimpse into the dire situation. An audited financial statementshows that revenue from member dues dropped from $170 million in 2018 to $113 million last yeara 34 percent decline marking the lowest annual membership revenue figure that the NRA has posted since 2012, which is especially troubling considering that the cost of membership dues has sharply increased in that timeat least twice in the last four years alone. (The NRA did not respond for a request for clarification on membership numbers and the decline in revenue from member dues.) That drop in revenue, along with the millions of dollars it has tied up to fight the New York attorney generals lawsuit and other litigation, meant a far smaller war chest for the 2020 election. This time around, the NRA spent only $24 million on federal electionsless than half of what it did in 2016 and barely more than the combined $22.1 million spent by two of the nations largest gun reform organizations, Everytown for Gun Safety and Giffords. Meanwhile, the Gun Owners of America spent $900,000 in the 2020 election cycle, 14 times more than in 2016.

Thats a huge decrease in political spending, Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor and gun policy expert at UCLAs School of Law, says of the NRAs involvement in the 2020 election. Especially at a time when the gun control side is becoming more active, more engaged, putting more money into elections, and doing better get-out-the-vote mobilization efforts than ever before. All the while, more and more NRA members became disappointed and disillusioned with the organization. Theyve certainly lost members over this, says Van Cleave, who claims that his groups membership more than quadrupled in the six weeks following its 2020 Lobby Day rally, growing from about 8,000 to more than 35,000. Many of the new members of his group, he says, had quit the NRA. I see a lot of disappointment, he adds. The way a lot of the money is being used. Thats the concern.

The Virginia Citizens Defense League came into existence in 1994, just as congressional Democrats pushed through a pair of gun safety billsincluding a decade-long ban on assault weaponsthat sparked the modern gun control debate. Paul Moog formed the group to fight gun safety legislation not on a national level, but locally in Virginia. Originally called the Northern Virginia Citizens Defense League, the groups first order of business was to pressure state lawmakers to change the states concealed carry laws from its may issue legal statusmeaning that the state may issue a concealed carry permit only to people who can prove they have a good reasonto shall issue, granting anyone eligible to own a firearm to also obtain a concealed carry permit.

Building on the early success, Moog soon dropped the Northern from VCDLs title and set his sights on ensuring that the whole state was as gun-friendly as it could possibly be. To do so, the group established a playbook of lobbying lawmakersmuch like the NRAcoupled with public protests meant to intimidate any push for tightening Virginias gun laws. In 1998, VCDL members protested a Northern Virginia churchs gift-for-guns program, which encouraged people to surrender their unwanted firearms in exchange for gift certificates to local businesses. In 2002, the group led a boycott against the Valley View Mall in Roanoke over its ban of firearms in the mall. And in 2004, after a slew of gun control bills failed to make it out of the states general assembly, the VCDL encourage firearm owners to turn up at restaurants and shopping centers with their sidearm strapped to their hip in celebrationin turn intimidating some clientele.

In 2001, Van Cleave became the groups president and, one year later, members staged their first Lobby Day protest. Under his leadership, the VCDL has expanded its national profile, showing an eagerness to go on national news programs to defend his extremist views on the Second Amendmentespecially in the wake of mass shootings. After the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, Van Cleave gleefully defended the semiautomatic military-style rifle used by the shooter, Adam Lanza, to the Washington Post. Guns are fun, and some of them are much more cool than others, he said. Its just like we have television sets that look cool, and others are much more boxy. He has also criticized the NRA for not going far enough in their comments calling for armed guards in schools. If you have got a permit, if youre carrying everywhere else you goa school is no different, Van Cleave told WWBT, Richmonds NBC affiliate.

But Van Cleaves most notable brush with public notoriety is also his most embarrassing. In 2018, he was duped by notorious prankster Sacha Baron Cohen for his Showtime series Who Is America? in a segment where he films a faux-PSA for a gun-training program for kids, KinderGuardians. Despite the embarrassment (which he attempted to distance himself from by claiming he knew he was being set up but went along in an attempt to protect other gun advocates from similar ploys), Van Cleave and the VCDL have managed to greatly broaden their coalition within Virginia, acting as both a blueprint for local grassroots gun rights groups in other states and as fodder for national ones seeking to capitalize on the NRAs decline.

Since the Lobby Day rally, a number of militias have formed throughout Virginia, something that Van Cleave says the VCDL wasnt involved in organizing but welcomes. But his group has been busy this year: the VCDL fought Northams actions to slow the spread of the coronavirus, including a successful legal effort in April to overturn part of the governors executive order that classified shooting ranges among the businesses forced to close as the state went into lockdown. The VCDL has also been heavily involved in the growing number of towns and municipalities in the state declaring themselves Second Amendment sanctuariesand vowing not to enforce any new gun control laws passed at the state and county level. Through VCDLs email alert system, which Van Cleave says has tens of thousands of subscribers, they are able to send an SOS to its members whenever gun control legislation is on the table anywhere in the state, mobilizing members to voice opposition to any such measures in public comment forums. We dont let these localities take our basic civil rights and do with them what they please, Van Cleave told a local Virginia newspaper in July. When it comes to guns, thats when the rules go out the windowwere not going to let them get away with it.

Several groups have already ramped up their operations over the past year, such as Gun Owners of America, a national group that former Texas Rep. Ron Paul once called the only no-compromise gun lobby in Washington. Van Cleave says the VCDL has been working quite a bit with Gun Owners of America on both state and national issues. I think whats going to happen is as the NRA ends up being pretty crippled for a while, there are other organizations that are going to step forward, he says. Theres not going to be a void there, somebodys going to fill that.

As the coronavirus sent much of the country into lockdown this spring, more new armed groups emerged in protest. Members of the Michigan Liberty Militia stormed the states capitol building in protest of the tyranny that Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was imposing with her strict stay-at-home orders. As unrest in the wake of George Floyds murder spread across the country, so too did armed militia groups, from Portland to Wisconsin, Texas, and Virginia, where authorities claim that the antigovernment extremist group known as the boogaloo boyswhose rise this year started at the Lobby Day rally in Richmondstoked violent confrontations between police and Black Lives Matter protesters. In mid-October, the FBI announced that members of an extremist militia group had plotted to kidnap Gov. Whitmer, as well as take over the states capitol building, where they would hold televised executions of public officials. The group also discussed taking Northam, Virginias Democratic governor, according to the FBI. But Van Cleave dismisses any connection between VCDLs Lobby Day protest and the rise of violence from extremist militia groups, calling it overblown lies from the media. Im very skeptical of a lot of that, he says.

Still, as groups vie to fill the NRAs void, extremist gun violence is increasing in ever more concerning ways. Two armed men from Virginia were arrested outside of the Philadelphia Convention Center on November 5 after police received a tip about plans to raid a truckload of fake ballots. One of the men, Joshua Macias, co-founded the group Vets for Trump and had attended VCDLs Lobby Day rally in January, according to a review of his Twitter account. In a video taken during the rally, Macias can be seen, with a bullhorn in hand, firing up a crowd of hundreds on a downtown Richmond side street: There are veterans out herewho made an oath to defend this constitution against foreign and domestic enemies!

In the aftermath of the election, as Trump refused to concede and peddled conspiracy theories about election fraud, thousands of his supportersincluding violent extremist groups like the Proud Boysmarched in DC to protest the results. Though DC law forbids carrying firearms in most public places, includingat public demonstrations, the Oath Keepers, an extremist militia group, posted a note on its website to supporters saying that our men will be standing by, awaiting the Presidents orders to call us up as the militia, which would override D.C.s ridiculous anti-gun laws. At least four people were arrested on gun charges at the rally.

Not all gun owners are flocking to these far-right groups. Other gun groups like the Socialist Rifle Association and the National African American Gun Association have also seen membership increase, though theirs is much smaller than their ultra-right counterparts. And in October, Giffords, the gun safety group co-founded by former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords (D), launched a new national firearms group for gun owners that it hopes can take the NRAs mantle while also pushing for gun control measures.

It would be convenient to link the rise of extremist gun groups this year to the NRAs downfall: At a time when gun control groups are more impactful than theyve ever beenspending millions of dollars to successfully boost political candidates running on a gun control platformtheir biggest foe is down and out, leaving gun owners across the country feeling powerless. But Winkler doesnt think the narrative tracks. He explains that the rise in militia activity and armed protesters this year seems to be the natural growth of something that started about 10 to 12 years ago with the tea party movement when guns became a symbol of protest. I dont think the vast majority of people who bring guns to a protest are planning on starting a firefight, he says. Theyre not planning on starting a war. Theyre doing it symbolically for protest. Still, Winkler worries that it can go awry, especially given the spate of right-wing violence from extremist militias at protests over the summer. Theyre suddenly shifting to self-defense, he says, the moment they see someone or something happening that they feel threatened by.

Van Cleave sees his groups Lobby Day protest and continued advocacy for gun rights not so much as a protest, but as a battle. Thats especially true in a Joe BidenKamala Harris administration, which Van Cleave says has basically declared war on the Second Amendment. His group was planning another massive Lobby Day protest next month, but that went awry when gun control groups got permits for the space where VCDL typically holds its event. In retaliation, VCDL sent a message to members with plans for a caravan rally similar to the Trump rallies that took place across the country before the election. VCDL is going to do thatbut on steroids! the email stated. Beyond Lobby Day, Van Cleave hints at other events and strategies to fight any gun control laws that the new administration may try to pass, whether through litigation or on the streets. Our job is to protect that [Second Amendment] right by whatever means is necessary.

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A More Extreme Gun Rights Movement Is Emerging in the NRA's Wake - Mother Jones

Take Action Time to Act

Georgia/United States -(AmmoLand.com)-Lately, we have noted what the stakes for the Georgia runoff elections include, both on the legislative front and in terms of secondary issues. Much of this has focused on various adverse actions or consequences of anti-Second Amendment extremism that they would be preventing. But there is also good stuff that a Senate controlled by Second Amendment supporters could do, even if Biden is president.

One of the duties of Congress is to carry out oversight of the various executive agencies. This is in conjunction with the power of the purse which the Constitution has invested in the legislative branch. Oversight, when properly wielded does more than just shine the light on malfeasance or the failure to act it can actually be one of those things that can shift the political landscape.

For instance, an oversight hearing for our favorite agency to hate, BATF, could spend a lot of time on the non-prosecution of crimes covered under 18 USC 922. Properly done, such a hearing, focusing, say on the violent crime in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimorecould reap huge benefits.

Lori Lightfoot has often liked to blame other states for Chicagos violent crime, often because they are far more respectful of our Second Amendment rights. She and other big city mayors even try playing the race card when they are called out. But the fact is, running the guns to Chicago from out of state for use in criminal acts is itself a federal felony, and can net serious jail time. Oversight hearings could be very useful in highlighting the cynical division Lightfoot and others are using.

Another option is to propose pro-Second Amendment legislation and to use the hearings to make the case to the American people. We have covered a number of pro-Second Amendment legislation in the past, including a privacy enhancement for gun owners from Senator Kelly Loeffler, legislation that would mark an effective resolution of the situation with AR pistols by Senator-elect Roger Marshall, and legislation that would restrict corporate gun control.

The fact is, by being able to hold hearings on legislation, elected officials can help make the case for these bills, but also again, highlight abuses as well. Its one thing for a gun control law to be passed by elected officials. We know gun control laws usually dont solve the problem, they punish innocent people for crimes and acts of madness they didnt commit, and those that might be effective are never enforced. But you can vote elected officials out. On the other hand, what recourse is there when big corporations like Bank of America deny services based on the support of the Second Amendment, or for companies who seek to help Americans exercise their rights?

The fact is, controlling the power of the purse also means that the Senate can, in some ways, affect policy. Want to encourage local governments to work with BATF to enforce certain gun laws? Some conditions on grants would be a way to do that. Want to keep financial regulations from being misused to target gun makers? A little rider in some of those massive appropriations bills can accomplish that.

Is it the best way to accomplish the goals? No, at best the funding controls are stopgaps. But stopgaps still buy time, time to elect pro-Second Amendment officials and to improve the situation down the road.

The fact is, a pro-Second Amendment Senate can still take positive steps to protect our rights, even if Joe Biden ends up in the Oval Office. To ensure that pro-Second Amendment Senators can to protect our rights in that unfortunate situation, Second Amendment supporters need to back Loeffler and Perdue, then also support the National Rifle Associations Political Victory Fund and their Institute for Legislative Action, in order to be ready for 2022 and 2024.

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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What Pro-Second Amendment Moves Are Possible With A Pro-Second Amendment Senate? - AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

CLEVELAND Back in March of this year, hours before the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way political campaigns work, then-candidate Joe Biden stopped in Ohio.

First, he stopped in Columbus and met with members of two gun control advocacy groups, Everytown Survivor Network and Moms Demand Action, according to Rebecca Gorski a volunteer with the latter group.

Gorski was waiting for Biden's second scheduled stop that day, but in the hours between the end of Biden's stop in the state capital and his stop in Northeast Ohio, the seriousness of the pandemic set in, and the event was canceled.

Democratic contender Sen. Bernie Sanders was also scheduled to stop in Cleveland, but his trip to Northeast Ohio was also canceled. This was March 10, a week before the March 17 Ohio primary.

For the next seven months, traditional campaign conversations were often eschewed for speeches about COVID-19, the economy and recovery.

Despite the new style of campaign, which for Biden meant months of videos and small group discussions instead of large political rallies, Gorski said the issue of firearms in the United States wasn't forgotten.

"I think candidates were speaking about it more than ever before, and I think that it's important to voters," she said.

Gorski was active in the 2020 election for Moms Demand Action in the Cleveland area. The political action group was started in 2012 by Shannon Watts in the months following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

"So we must address these issues at the federal level," Gorski said. "And we're lucky to have guns as champions like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the White House."

Now, President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris support the Democrat party platform.

Part of the platform includes enacting universal background checks, closing the "Charleston Loophole," ending the manufacture of assault weapons and passing legislation for safe home storage.

"Which is it's a good idea to have good home storage requirements," said Second Amendment activist and radio host Amanda Suffecool. She said the problem begins "when you add the word mandate and then you add the word under penalty of law."

Where Gorski sees promise in the Biden-Harris agenda, Suffecool sees a breach of freedom.

"When you talk to the liberal gun club, they're like, 'Yeah, that's the platform that's not real.' Well, if it's not real, why is it saying this is the direction we want to go?" Suffecool said.

Suffecool advocates for more education when it comes to gun ownership and usage. That is not in the current platform. She doesn't think the platform is going in the right direction.

These two women don't agree on much when it comes to gun issues, but they both say the pandemic hasn't dulled the conversation about guns in America.

That conversation is seen in action at the Parma Armory.

Owner Rob Eurle said at the beginning of the year he was preparing for a rush on guns depending on the outcome of the election.

But it was the start of the pandemic and the lockdown in the spring that really brought gun sales up.

"I think it's maybe across the nation that the Second Amendment is just getting more awareness now," he said. "And you could see through this spike that we saw when the beginning of COVID that we were over like 300% and sales of both firearms and retail."

Eurle agrees there needs to be more education for potential and current gun owners.

With a change in administration, Eurle is preparing for a change in regulations.

"We don't know what restrictions we might see, or less restrictions, we might say," Eurle said. "We don't know. It's a mystery, especially with a changing every day."

He said even if background check regulations change under the new administration, he doesn't expect any change in sales.

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Activists on both sides of gun issue wait for action from Biden administration - News 5 Cleveland

KENTWOOD, Mich. A book titled "The Great American Cheese War," was supposed to be just that. A fictional book. When Paul Flower reads the back cover aloud, it makes you laugh at how ridiculous the plot seems.

Flower published The Great American Cheese War in 2019, with a London publishing company.

They loved it because they dont get Americans and our gun culture, Flower said.

The plot of Flower's novel may sound oddly familiar.

This book is about the Michigan governor getting caught up in a conspiracy involving a virus, the Michigan militia, and Wisconsin," Flower said.

It is satire.

The serious issues that are underneath the humor are gun culture, second amendment debate, and this notion that we dont know whats true anymore. We have conspiracy theories that are floating everywhere,

Then Flower's story, the one he wrote and published, started to become reality.

I started getting freaked out in April. Because April was when members of the Michigan militia were suddenly inside the capital with guns, Flower said.

As if that wasn't weird enough, October came. News of the FBI investigation into a conspiracy to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer hit.

Then fast forward to October, and the news about the actual plot..and then I heard it ended in Wisconsin, I started getting phone calls from people asking if I was a time traveler, Flower said.

You can buy a copy of Flower's book here.

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Michigan writer's 2019 novel has strange similarities to the real plot to kidnap governor - Fox17

Its time to brace yourself. January 20, 2021 our country as we know it is about to change! The left is going to try to abolish all the rights so many of us have fought and died for. Little by little they will all begin to disappear.

To the folks that voted for green new deal, it will only destroy our new found energy supremacy, making us dependant on imported oil, and raise your gas prices. And free medical??? Be prepared for higher prices as well as waiting months for an appointment. They seek to destroy our second amendment and our Supreme Court... Just wait! Socialism does not work! A short look around the world should have opened your eyes, if youre able to look past the nose on your face.

BLM, ANTIFA and Libertarians will all soon become your new lawmakers. May God help us all! I pray for my children and my grandchildren that the Book of Revelations has not begun to show its ugly face.

Now is the time to stand tall and fight back against hypocrisy and those who choose to destroy the American way of life. I for one love my country and never falter or leave anyone behind, nor forfeit my unalienable right to live free or die.

Whether or not this election was fair, it is time for all Americans to take notice, we can no longer sit back and do nothing. Im an old man, once a warrior, who will always stand tall to support our Constitutional Rights. And even though its tough during these times, I keep God in my heart and right hand. God gave us the strength to fight for what is right, use it. We are all people in Gods Hand.

Harry Crist

588 Longbranch Rd.

Hohenwald, TN

931-796-1675

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Letter to the Editor: Harry Crist - Lewis Herald

The Ledger

I frequently write about what Florida does wrong.But today Im writing about what Florida has done right. And remarkably, its on the topic of guns.

Dont get me wrong: Florida is gun-crazy in many ways.

We hand out concealed-weapons permits like Tic Tacs, leading the nation. And weve pioneered the homicide-inducing stand your ground gun law which was written by a lawmaker who is also a funeral home owner. (Conflict of interest?)

But were not all-the-way crazy.

Florida has refused to join the rush of other states to sanction the open carrying of firearms.

Open carry laws are why you see scowling young men cosplaying as military commandos in political protests in other states, standing often with AR-15s slung over their chests among crowds of protesters.

When former President Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he signed the Mulford Act, a law that specifically outlawed open carry, after members of the Black Panther Party began patrolling the streets of Oakland while brandishing loaded weapons.

The Heller case, a 2008 landmarkU.S. Supreme Court gun-rights decision, stopped short of a blanket, unfettered Second Amendment right to open-carry firearms.

"Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.

Florida, despite its reputation as the Gunshine State, has remained one of only four states that prohibits open carry by law. And state lawmakers have resisted efforts by gun-rights groups to change that.

A bill to allow open carry in Florida passed the Florida House in 2016but died in a Senate committee. And a year later, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the state law banning open carry in a case brought by a St. Lucie County gun owner.

In Florida, open carrying of weapons is sanctioned when youre fishing, hunting or camping.

Soevery once in a while, open-carry advocates make a display of this exception by standing on a congestedIntracoastal bridge, pretending to be fishing with their AR-15s hanging from their shoulders.

Floridas ban on open carry looks wise now, considering how the open display of firearms has become a form of visual intimidation used at political protests during this hotly contested election.

The gathering of Arizona protesters supporting President Donald Trump outside the elections office in Phoenix included men legallydisplaying their military-style assault weapons.

And the interrupted plot to kidnap and kill Michigans Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called for a swarming of 200 armed militia members at the state Capitola place where open carry is permitted and the sight of civilian commandos armed to the teeth was not unusual.

After the arrests of militia members in the plot to kill the governor, Michigan tried to ban the open carry of firearms inpolling places on Election Day. But the state courts ruled that the guns would have to be allowed in the polling places.

So, take heart, Floridians. Were not that crazy.

We may have no shortage of aggrieved hotheads and Trump dead-enders riding around in their flag-flying Vanilla ISIS pickup trucks.

But the AR-15s these self-deputized patriots crave to display will have to be imaginary.

Frank Cerabino is a columnist for the Palm Beach Post. Email him at fcerabino@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter@FranklyFlorida.

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Even in gun-lovin' Florida where you can fish with an AR-15 we have our limits - The Ledger

On Tuesday, December 1, there is free four-hour continuing legal education program on "Firearms Litigation: Liability, Regulation, and the Constitution." The program is co-sponsored by the Center on Civil Justice at NYU School of Law, the Duke Center for Firearms Law, and the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School. It will run from 1 to 5 p.m., Eastern Time. Free registration is available here. The event will be transmitted via Zoom.

Panel 1 is "Liability Litigation: Products, Preemption, and the PLCAA." The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) is a 2005 federal statute that bans many tort lawsuits against firearms manufacturers and retailers. The PLCAA does not restrict lawsuits about firearms that are actually defectivefor example, a handgun that fires when it is accidentally dropped.

As my 2016 post describes, the federal statute, like 34 prior state statutes, resulted from numerous lawsuits organized by gun control groups and certain government officials (including Andrew Cuomo). The coordinated suits aimed to present the firearms business with a stark choice: 1. Cede control of the industry to a supervisory committee run by anti-gun advocates; 2. Be bankrupted by litigation costs from many simultaneous cases in different courts.

The PLCAA regulations on lawsuits include what is called the "predicate exception." A business can be sued if it "knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product, and the violation was a proximate cause of the harm."

Panel 1 will mainly examine the "predicate exception." The discussion is timely. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court denied cert. for a 4-3 Connecticut Supreme Court decision in Remington v. Soto. The Connecticut majority held that Connecticut's general statute against Unfair Trade Practices had been violated because Remington's advertising was too militaristic in tone. Further, the statute against bad advertising in general qualified for the predicate exception. This post describes the amicus brieff I filed in support of the cert. petition; the brief addresses First Amendment doctrine and history, and was on behalf of, inter alia, VC writers Eugene Volokh and Randy Barnett.

Panel 1 will be moderated by Abbe Gluck (Yale). The panelists are Mark Lanier (Lanier Law Firm), Alla Lefkowitz (Everytown), Timothy Lytton (Georgia State), and William Tong (Connecticut Attorney General). None of them would exactly be called a PLCAA supporter.

Panel 2 is Constitutional Litigation. This panel will be wide-ranging. The moderator is Adam Skaggs (Giffords). In addition to me, panelists will be:

Joseph Blocher (Duke). His remarks may include his recent article Why Regulate Guns? The article suggests that in the gun control debate, non-owners' "fundamental freedomsto travel, to speak, to learn, to pray, and to vote without fear or intimidationare at stake."

Bob Cottrol (George Washington). He will discuss the similarities of Second Amendment litigation today with litigation on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments in the early twentieth century. Cottrol is co-author of The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration, cited by Justice Thomas in his concurrences in Printz v. United States and McDonald v. City of Chicago.

Mary Anne Franks (Miami). She will discuss constitutional firearms litigation as a manifestation of fragility. Franks is author of The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech.

Deepak Gupta (Gupta Wessler). The well-known appellate advocate, who often represents Everytown, will discuss some of his recent litigation.

David Kopel (U. of Denver, Independence Inst., Cato Inst.). I too will talk about some of my cases. Additionally, I will present some history Second Amendment litigation, as described in my article Lyman Trumbull: Author of the Thirteenth Amendment, Author of the Civil Rights Act, and the First Second Amendment Lawyer.

Panel 3: The Future of Litigation Strategies

Moderated by Darrell Miller (Duke), this panel examines litigation strategy and practice, as well as statutory reforms affecting litigationperhaps including the long-running effort to get rid of PLCAA or eviscerate it.

Panelists are Hannah Shearer (Giffords, Litigation Director), Christopher Boehning (Paul Weiss, brief writer in some recent leading cases), Evan Chesler (Chairman of Cravath), Troy McKenzie (NYU), and Erin Murphy (Kirkland & Ellis, Second Amendment litigator since 2015, often representing the NRA).

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Firearms Litigation: Liability, Regulation, and the Constitution - Reason

The 2nd arrived on Netflix in the US on November 30th but is the all-action movie a sequel? What is the meaning of its title?

Netflix may be known for its library of big-name original films and TV shows but the streaming service also plays host to a huge range of lesser-known indie films.

The latest of these indie films to arrive on Netflix is the Ryan Phillipe-starring action film, The 2nd.

However, the films title has some viewers confused and has left many asking whether or not a film called The 1st exists.

Is the 2nd a sequel and if not, what is the meaning of its title?

The 2nd arrived on Netflix on November 30th after its initial release earlier in the year.

The film follows Vic Davis, the leader of the Delta Team special forces unit, as a simple visit to collect his son from college leads to an all-action shootout.

Vics son, Shawn, has a crush on a girl called Erin, who is the daughter of the countrys supreme court justice.

When Vic realises that Erins driver is not her usual escort, he quickly grows suspicious and gets ready for action.

Thats right, The 2nd is not a sequel to a film called The 1st.

Instead, the films title is a reference to its plot and the motivation of its main villain.

The 2nds title is a reference to the Second Amendment in the US Constitution which gives US citizens the right to keep and bear arms.

Thats because, the films plot centers around a vote to repeal the Second Amendment, banning guns in the US.

The films villain, Director Phillips of the CIA, wants the Second Amendment to be repealed in the hopes of creating a safer society where school shootings are a thing of the past.

However, hes chosen the wrong victim as Vic, Shawn and Erin see that Director Phillips plan fails.

The 2nd is available to stream now on Netflix in the US after releasing on November 30th while in the UK, the film is due to release on Sunday, December 6th.

In other news, Rust Creek ending explained: Explore the final moments of the Hermione Corfield-starring film

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Is The 2nd movie a sequel? The title of Netflixs new action movie explained - HITC - Football, Gaming, Movies, TV, Music

The west Texas town of Ackerly has outlawed abortion.

By a unanimous vote, the city council made Ackerly the seventeenth Sanctuary City for the Unborn in Texas last night.

The ordinance makes it unlawful to procure, perform, aid, or abet abortions within town limits. The city may enforce it by two methods: the public mechanism and the private mechanism.

The public enforcement mechanism lets the city impose fines on performers of abortions provided that the fine will not create an undue burden on women seeking them. The city cannot collect these fines unless Roe v. Wade is overturned.

The private mechanism, more immediate, holds abortion providers liable in tort to surviving relatives of the aborted child, thus allowing them to sue for damages.

Like previous versions of the ban adopted elsewhere, Ackerlys ordinance opens with a series of legal facts and claims to help squeeze it through loopholes in Texas and federal law. It notes that Texas has never repealed its statutes against abortion and refers to Texas case precedent stating that such laws will remain in place until the legislature repeals them.

The Texas murder statute defines the crime of murder to include any act that intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth. See Texas Penal Code 19.02; Texas Penal Code 1.07, the ordinance reads.

Although the statute exempts lawful medical procedures from the definition of murder, see Texas Penal Code 19.06(2), an abortion is not a lawful medical procedure under Texas law unless the life of the mother is in danger, see Wests Texas Civil Statutes, article 4512.1 (1974).

Right to Life East Texas Director Mark Lee Dickson introduced the ordinance in Ackerly.

I am thankful for the mayor and city council of Ackerly who chose to stand for the lives of the most innocent and vulnerable among us, Dickson said. If every city had leaders like them, leaders who were willing to stand for what was right, we would wake up to a very different America.

Ackerlys adoption comes on the heels of Lubbocks rejection two weeks ago.

Under pressure from state lawmakers and pro-life clubs at Texas Tech, the City of Lubbock first refused to consider the ordinance after a consultation with Olson & Olson, a Houston law firm, shored up the citys official opinion that the ordinance was unconstitutional and would face unwinnable legal battles if adopted. When a petition forced the reluctant council to a public vote on the ordinance, the members unanimously voted against it with most calling it unlawful under the Texas Constitution and the Roe v. Wade ruling despite the fact that the ordinance works through private suits instead of top-down city enforcement until the potential overturn of Roe. Supporters of the ordinance came armed with a letter of legal opinion signed by several Texas attorneys arguing that the ordinance would harmonize with Texas standing abortion laws.

The relevant provision [of the Texas Constitution] prohibits municipalities from enacting ordinances inconsistent with the Constitution of the State, or of the general laws enacted by the Legislature of this State. The general laws enacted by the Legislature of this State include the pre-Roe statutes outlawing abortion, which have never been repealed, and which Olson & Olson refuses to acknowledge, the letter reads.

So far, the only lawsuit the ordinance has faced came from a number of abortion providers and advocacy groups who took issue with the language of the text. The lawsuit was dropped once the text was tweaked, and as yet the enforcement itself has not met a challenge in court.

Though the city council voted it down, the citizens of Lubbock will get the chance to vote on the ordinance when it appears on the ballot in the next uniform election.

The ordinance, which has favored rural towns, may jump a county and come to Odessa next depending on the outcome of the mayoral runoff election. Candidate Javier Joven named an abortion ban second among his priorities between auditing the budget and designating Odessa a Sanctuary City for the Second Amendment.

Below is a copy of Ackerlys ordinance.

Disclosure: Unlike almost every other media outlet, The Texan is not beholden to any special interests, does not apply for any type of state or federal funding, and relies exclusively on its readers for financial support. If youd like to become one of the people were financially accountable to, click here to subscribe.

A free bi-weekly commentary on current events by Konni Burton.

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Ackerly Becomes 17th Texas Town to Outlaw Abortion - The Texan

Opinion | Guest ColumnMontana values include protecting the unborn, securing our Second Amendment right, and developing our natural resources

By Randy Pinocci // Nov 29, 2020

Montana conservatives had an historic night on Election Day. After taking out a slew of Republicans in the primary some voting with Democrats over 200 times during the last legislative session conservatives swept seats by comfortable margins around the state. In Cascade County, Republicans won every legislative seat. With Governor-elect Greg Gianforte at the helm, conservatives will have a real chance to make Montanas economy rival those of Florida and Texas.

During the China virus pandemic, out-of-staters from places like California and Washington have flocked to Montana like refugees many buying up real estate with cash offers, sight unseen. This presents all Montanans with the responsibility of educating our new neighbors on why Montana is the last best place to live, work, and raise a family. After all, people do not leave Seattle just because they do not like the weather.

After talking with conservative leaders in California and Washington, it is clear that the sum of elitist liberals policies completely eliminated the middle class. That is how socialism works. Our responsibility as conservatives will be to fundamentally reset government and put our middle class first. Yes, we want to attract the investment that will provide jobs and build our economy up, but we cannot afford to do so at the expense of those whose families have spent generations making us what we are today. The heart of Montana is in communities like Lewistown, Havre, Sidney, Great Falls, and Colstrip not the billionaires campground known as Big Sky.

Montana values include protecting the unborn, securing our Second Amendment right, and developing our natural resources. People are free to not own a firearm, drink from paper straws, and drive an electric vehicle, but we cannot allow this to become a mandate from the heavy hand of government. With conservative majorities in the legislature, a Republican governor, and strong attorney general, we are in a position to expand our freedoms and defend them when dark money groups try to challenge them in court.

As Governor-elect Gianforte and conservative legislators work to undo 16 years of damage done by Democratic governors, we all have a duty to rally our new neighbors behind their conservative agenda. If we do not educate our new neighbors, our chapter of governing could easily become the calm before the storm when radical liberals sweep back into power and make us an extension of the left coast. They need to know that our coal funds the school their children attend, the parks they play in, and the libraries they read in.

With about 44% of our state budget being made up from federal dollars, we will have to find ways to become more financially independent from the federal government. Federal aid does not reduce the national debt and often comes with strings attached. By growing our economy in ways that expand the middle class, keeps home ownership within reach for those who work, and keeps our small businesses and family farms strong we will remain the last best place in America.

Republican Randy Pinocci represents District 1 on the Montana Public Service Commission.

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Rally New Neighbors Behind Conservative Agenda - Flathead Beacon

Before Dan Bongino was one of the loudest voices in Trump-era conservative media, he was a congressional candidate. With a background as a Secret Service agent who protected Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, he tried in vain to use that bipartisan glow to win over Maryland voters in a U.S. Senate race.

The president was a wonderful guy, Bongino said of Obama in 2011. From what I saw he was a wonderful father and a wonderful man and he was very, very nice and very kind to me.

Two years later before he lost another run to represent Maryland, this time in the U.S. House he wrote in a memoir that Obama was one of a group of men I would have gladly sacrificed my life for.

How things have changed. Bongino is now one of the countrys most prominent conspiracy theorists, railing against a deep state, mask mandates, and spreading false information about voting systems used in the 2020 presidential election. Videos of his combative talk show, on which he recently called Obama the most corrupt president in U.S. history, are routinely shared by the most popular pages on Facebook. And hes taken a stab at media moguldom by buying stakes in alternative social media companies geared toward the right, including Parler, the Rebekah Mercer-funded Twitter lookalike thats surged in popularity since the election.

Bonginos transformation into a peddler of conspiracy theories didnt happen overnight. In 2017, after his failed Senate run, he built a brand and audience at NRATV, a short-lived and little-watched streaming network once billed as the voice of the NRA. Hes one of a group of new conservative stars whose careers have been shaped by the defunct network. Although it went offline last year and is at the center of a bitter court battle between the National Rifle Association and its former ad agency it presaged the upstart channels like NewsMax and One America that have gained popularity with an extreme us-vs-them media strategy borrowed from the gun group. Now, former NRATV personalities like Bongino, Grant Stinchfield, and Dana Loesch are among the most influential conspiracy theorists fueling distrust in the 2020 election.

Dawn R. Gilpin, an associate professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University who is writing a book about the NRAs media operations, said the group has been involved in culture wars stuff for a long time. That didnt start with NRATV. Compared to its legacy publications like American Rifleman, she said, it was much more relentless, it was more pervasive if you were aware of it.

By the time NRATV stopped streaming, the gun group had sunk around $40 million into it, only to have garnered an audience in the low tens of thousands, according to documents filed in court by the NRA. Not only was it a financial boondoggle, the NRA claims its own board members were turned off by how divisive the content had become.

Born out of NRA News, a sleepy streaming channel focused on gun issues that started in 2004, NRATV was something of a cross between glossy prime time Fox News opinion shows and low-stakes lifestyle content on HDTV. Viewers could stream shows about country music and antiques, watch programs geared toward women like Love at First Shot, and then watch the NRAs executive vice president Wayne LaPierre go on lavish hunting trips. The strategy, according to court documents, was to bring in a broader group of dues-paying members beyond the hardcore.

The channel was trying to say were also a lifestyle brand, but with guns, said A.J. Bauer, an assistant media professor at New York University and co-editor of News on the Right: Studying Conservative News Cultures.

That latitude allowed NRATV to make content that was ancillary, at best, to the issues around the Second Amendment, he said. It also gave its explicitly political hosts a platform to fulminate about a wide range of issues including media bias, identity politics, and Democratic politicians. NRATV certainly wasnt the first conservative outlet to air outrageous material from the political fringe. But where it presaged the rest of the conservative media landscape was in creating what Gilpin calls a counter-public, an oppositional public to mainstream media, she said. If you can set yourself up as the enemy, then they might cover you. In fact, it happened on a couple of occasions.

Even without a big, traditional audience, clips from NRATV would soon find a second life online. Loesch was featured in several ads complaining about coverage in The New York Times, including one in which she said were coming for you. In another bizarre ad, after Bongino had criticized CNN host Don Lemon for his coverage of antifa, Bongino put whole lemons into a blender, and then drank a glass of Don Lemon-aide . That vaguely threatening material even made its way to Last Week Tonight, John Olivers comedy news show, which dedicated an entire episode to NRATVs content.

The provocative, viral-focused strategy may have gone too far even for the NRA. In its lawsuit, the NRA went so far as to call its own programming a dystopian cultural rant and distasteful and racist.

Another thing about NRATV thats worth noting is whoever was in charge of talent scouting for them did a pretty amazing job, Bauer said.

Bonginos rise has been particularly meteoric. The former New York City police officer started podcasting around 2015, and would soon be contributing and guest hosting for radio hosts like Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, and Inforwars Alex Jones. Despite his proximity to big names, he was still trying to distinguish himself among conservative commentators and struggling to grow his audience. He would dedicate some of his early shows to gun issues, but he was mostly focused on economics, which hed studied in college. His podcast was produced by CRTV, the management company for Levin, which later merged with The Blaze, Glenn Becks media company. His rise was slow, and by the time he joined NRATV, his podcast had garnered about 10 to 20,000 downloads, according to the former producer.

When asked to comment for this story, Bongino wrote back: Lol. Pee-pee tape pushers writing about false stories, absolutely hilarious. (He often criticizes journalists by referring to reports about the partially discredited dossier on Donald Trump that mentioned such a tape. The Trace didnt write about the tape, but has reported on the NRAs connections to Russia and the impeachment investigation.)

Bongino had also been appearing on NRATV, and in February 2017, he was given a show of his own, We Stand. A former producer for his podcast said the increased budget gave him the resources to hone his polarizing craft. It afforded him [the opportunity] to buy new equipment, to try out new technology, to have another platform, to have to do another show. He got a lot of reps in there, a lot of practice on their dime, one former Bongino producer told The Trace. In many respects, it is a jumping-off point.

On his show, Bongino inveighed against familiar conservative targets like the mainstream media and Robert Mueller, then investigating Trumps relationship with Russia. In late 2018, Bongino said his entire life is about owning the libs. Gilpin, who has archived much of the NRAs contents, said Bongino was a fixture on the channels big-ticket shows, and was almost always cross-promoted on the NRAs main webpage.

At least one of Bonginos producers at CRTV, however, was skeptical of the relationship with NRATV. When you become the gun guy or the gun lady, then youre destroying your sellability in the marketplace, the producer, who asked not to be named, recently told The Trace, noting that conservative hosts who dont just talk about gun issues bring in a wider array of advertisers. Thats just too narrow, and too negative, and too hard of a burden, because when the advertisers and other people start bailing out, thats exactly the kind of thing that becomes hard to defend. (Bonginos podcast sponsors now include a mens underwear company and a company that obscures users internet browsing history).

By the end of 2018, Bonginos show was cancelled. The Daily Beast reported that he had been dropped by NRATV, something Bongino has disputed and unsuccessfully sued the outlet for. (The Trace and the Daily Beast are represented by the same law firm, Davis Wright Tremaine, on some legal matters).

Since then, Bonginos brand of confrontational conservative commentary has caught fire on social media and among podcast listeners. During the election, he tacked to extreme right positions, sermonizing about Hunter Bidens laptop. Later, he made evidence-free assertions that fraud had tainted vote counts. His audience lapped it up. His podcast soon eclipsed The Joe Rogan Experience on iTunes, and his YouTube views routinely rose above 200,000 a day. Hes also touted his investments in Parler and a conservative-focused video site, which have exploded in popularity since the election.

Meanwhile, the square-jawed and sometimes jocular Grant Stinchfield has also used NRATV as a career stepping stone. An Emmy-winning TV and radio personality who ran unsuccessfully for the House seat representing Dallas, Stinchfield started his broadcast career in 1995 at KECI, a local news station in Missoula, Montana. He later hosted shows for NBC affiliates about cold cases and identity theft before starting his own talk show on KLIF, a radio station in Dallas. He also owned a handful of small businesses, including a Kwik Kar Lube & Auto Repair and a tree-trimming company, according to LinkedIn.

Stinchfield joined NRATV in 2016, hosting a politics and news show on which he warned in 2017 that Black Lives Matter protests would soon make race relations as bad as in South Africa. In another episode, he claimed without evidence that white families are being tortured and killed almost every day in racist violence, according to a transcript by Media Matters. He also starred in an ad wearing a T-shirt that said Socialist Tears on it, while he swung a sledgehammer into a TV airing mainstream news. He appears to have left NRATV when it went off the air in June 2019. (Stinchfield, who didnt return a request for comment through NewsMax TV, is currently in separate litigation with Ackerman McQueen, the NRAs former public relations firm which sued him last year for making allegedly inflated comments about viewership).

In August, Stinchfield joined NewsMax TV, where he hosts an eponymous news show that takes a broad approach to the news. Like Bongino, Stinchfields shows have focused less on guns and Second Amendment issues, and his Twitter feed has few mentions of guns since he left the NRA. Instead, hes latched on to the false story that the 2020 election was stolen, and been rewarded. The far-right cable channel was recently a backwater for conservative news, capturing around 25,000 viewers on average, but its ratings have exploded 400-fold since the election, according to CNN. Though Stinchfield once wrote an op-ed expressing his regret for voting for Trump, in late November Trump even promoted on his Twitter feed a clip of Stinchfield on NewsMax TV making fun of Bidens halting speech. On December 2, he tweeted that Trump and attorney Victoria Toensing were Warriors! for not giving up on the election.

Loesch is probably the host most defined by her relationship with the NRA, though she has distanced herself from the group since her departure in 2019. She started her career in local media in St. Louis, writing for a local magazine and newspaper. Soon after, she started The Dana Show on local radio, on which by her own description she tried to emulate Howard Stern and Jon Stewart. In 2009, she co-founded a local chapter of the Tea Party and would soon attract the attention of other conservative stars, filling in for right-wing radio host Michael Savage, getting hired by Andrew Breitbart to write and edit for his site, and in 2013 having her show picked up by Becks BlazeTV, though it was dropped four years later.

In 2016, NRA hired Loesch as an adviser and a host for NRATV, where she ended up hosting two shows, contributing often on Stinchfields time, and cutting the confrontational ads that helped usher in the new media era for the NRA. The next year, the NRA made her a spokesperson. Her extremely confrontational style was integral to the NRATV tone,and while some of her statements verged on the baroque she was ridiculed for saying that the NRA will fight lies with the clenched fist of truth they were indelible and were widely spread by media figures like Oliver. Her rhetoric, however, went too far, even for the NRA board. She once showed a graphic of Thomas the Tank Engine in Ku Klux Klan hood after the shows creators added a Kenyan character, a segment too radioactive even for the NRA, according to legal filings.

Unlike some other NRATV alums, Loesch, who didnt return a request for comment, hasnt soared in the last two years of the Trump era. But she has maintained her already considerable following. She hosts a show on The First which is now home to Bill OReilly and her daily radio show has an audience of as much as 7.25 million, making her one of the most-listened to conservative voices in the country.

As upstart right-wing media companies continue to embrace baseless conspiracies and a growing audience NRATVs broader legacy may be in the way it appealed to viewers. When I first started looking at all this, I was like, Man, not very much of this is actually about guns, Gilpin said. Its about creating a gun owner identity, but [also] showing that you belong to something bigger, that this is not just about guns. Its about freedom. Its about your rights. Its about being an American a conservative American.

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These Stars of Right-Wing Facebook Got Their Start at NRATV - The Trace