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Author Topic: GUN POLITICS  (Read 549869 times)

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Offline Mark 79

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Re: GUN POLITICS
« Reply #40 on: December 20, 2025, 09:05:15 PM »
41 Members Of Congress Demand DOJ Halt Gun Control Defense In Fiery Letter
https://x.com/GunOwners/status/2001765452998209683
by Tyler Durden

Saturday, Dec 20, 2025 - 05:50 PM

Submitted by Gun Owners of America,
Gun owners' number one fighter in Washington, D.C., Representative Andrew Clyde, along with five senators and 35 other House members, have sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
In this letter, they've made it clear that the DOJ is out of line with Congress' intent.

Specifically, they cite the Justice Department's recent defense of the National Firearms Act in the Gun Owners of America case that we're affectionately calling the "One Big Beautiful Lawsuit."
The case itself, Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, centers around the recent removal of the $200 tax from items regulated by the National Firearms Act. Specifically, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, AOWs (short for "any other weapons," a catch-all term for items that don't fit neatly into the other categories of regulation), and silencers.
Previously, purchasing one of these highly regulated items would require a $200 tax payment, a background check including fingerprints and passport photos, and a lengthy wait.
But thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Trump in July, that $200 tax payment was removed from those aforementioned items.
Unfortunately, the registration requirements of the National Firearms Act remain. That's why we at Gun Owners of America are suing ATF and the Department of Justice to remove the registration requirements on these items.
The National Firearms Act and its registry, the NFRTR or National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, have been declared a legitimate use of Congress' article 1 power of taxation.
Keyword: "Taxation."
The NFA registry is a registry of tax payments, and those tax payments are associated with firearms. This is a sneaky way to get around calling it a gun registry, instead - it's a tax registry.
But what do you do when the tax has been decreased to zero dollars?
Well, the Department of Justice wants to keep the registration requirements in place, along with the penalties for noncompliance.
That's like if the IRS abolished the income tax but demanded that you still complete your W2 or 1099 tax forms every year, otherwise face prison time and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
To make matters worse, the DOJ used common anti-gun talking points to justify their defense of this unconstitutional registration scheme.
Here are some of the highlights:
  • DOJ Referred to NFA regulated firearms as "Weapons of War" a meaningless gun control lobby term meant to strike fear into the minds of those uneducated on firearms policy. The reality is, any weapon is a "weapon of war," and the Second Amendment was specifically written to protect those same types of weapons!
  • DOJ stated that NFA items were "especially susceptible to criminal misuse," a line taken straight from Biden-era Justice Department briefs meant to justify bans of certain firearms.
  • Finally, DOJ is claiming that because other parts of the NFA still generate revenue, the entire act along with the registration requirements for untaxed items is constitutional.
Rep. Clyde and 40 other members of Congress disagree. In fact, here's what they had to say:
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The registration requirements under the NFA are, in fact, inseparably linked to its taxation provisions. Registration serves as the mechanism by which the ATF accounts for the tax paid on each firearm, identified by its serial number.
The tax stamp affixed by the ATF to an NFA transfer and registration application reflects both the firearm’s serial number and the amount of tax paid for the transfer.
Moreover, the NFA’s criminal provisions pertain exclusively to the failure to pay or register the payment of this tax with the ATF. Any reinterpretation of the NFA that allows registration to persist once taxation has been removed contradicts the statute’s text, its structure, and Supreme Court precedent.
Following the OBBBA’s elimination of the tax on a broad class of firearms regulated under the NFA, the constitutional foundation for applying the NFA’s transfer and registration requirements to those $0-tax firearms no longer exists.
These requirements now operate without any corresponding exercise of Congress’s taxing power. As the Supreme Court upheld the NFA’s provisions only as “in aid” of that power, and since the relevant excise taxes have been repealed, the transfer and registration requirements should likewise be understood as repealed with respect to firearms now subject to a $0 tax.
The Department’s recent filing ignores this reality and instead offers a theory that would convert the NFA from a tax statute into a free-standing federal gun registry – an outcome Congress has never authorized and has repeatedly rejected.
In our lawsuit, we establish that thanks to two Supreme Court cases from the 1930s, US v. Sonzinsky & US v. Constantine, the Supreme Court has said that the NFA is an exercise of Congress' taxing power, and in addition, a tax that generates no revenue is therefore not a tax at all.
Rep. Clyde also states this plainly in his letter, saying:
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As you are well aware, Congress enacted the National Firearms Act in 1934, imposing an excise tax of $200 — equivalent to nearly $5,000 today — on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms. The NFA also established burdensome registration requirements for gun owners seeking to transfer NFA-regulated firearms...
Congress enacted the NFA pursuant to its taxing power under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. The Supreme Court, in Sonzinsky v. United States, held that the NFA’s registration provisions were “supportable as in aid” of Congress’s proper exercise of the taxing power. Furthermore, the Supreme Court in United States v. Constantine held that a tax that doesn’t generate revenue cannot be justified as a tax.
The National Firearms Act's legal foundation is that it's an outgrowth of Congress' taxing power. But when that tax is removed, does the federal government still get to maintain a registry?
The answer is obviously no.
We want to work with the Department of Justice to abolish unconstitutional gun control, not fight them tooth and nail as they defend it. At any time, they can decide if they want to be on the side of the Second Amendment.
Maybe this letter from Congress will help the DOJ see that!









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Offline Mark 79

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Re: GUN POLITICS
« Reply #41 on: December 20, 2025, 10:28:22 PM »
see attached file
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Offline Mark 79

  • Supporter
Re: GUN POLITICS
« Reply #42 on: January 06, 2026, 10:03:57 PM »
Chief Justice Roberts Is Not Defending The Second Amendment—He Is Containing It

https://www.ammoland.com/2026/01/chief-justice-roberts-is-not-defending-the-second-amendment-he-is-containing-it/

Chief Justice Roberts Is Not Defending The Second Amendment—He Is Containing It
Ammoland Inc. Posted on January 6, 2026 by Roger Katz
Opinion
Judges Court Gavel Law Legal

Judges Court Gavel Law Legal
New York – Let us dispense with the pleasantries.
The United States Supreme Court’s handling of Second Amendment cases is not “confusing,” not “complicated,” and not the product of innocent happenstance. It is, rather, the predictable output of discretionary power being used to avoid decisive confrontation with state defiance of the Court’s own landmark rulings.
And in that avoidance, the Second Amendment is being bled—slowly, methodically, and with a degree of institutional self-protection that should alarm every citizen who understands what the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms is, and what it is for.
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This companion article is necessarily short. The full argument is set forth in our original Arbalest Quarrel article, (Chief Justice Roberts Is Strangling The Life Out Of The Second Amendment) which we urge you to read in full. But the essentials are plain enough, and they must be stated plainly.
The Battle Is Not Only In The Merits—It Is In The Docket
Most Americans do not understand that the Supreme Court is not a forum of automatic justice.
The Court selects what it will hear. It grants or denies petitions for writs of certiorari at its discretion. And although Supreme Court Rule 10 pretends to supply a neutral architecture for that discretion, the reality is that Rule 10 functions as a judicial escape hatch—a convenient justification for declining the very cases that demand intervention.
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In no domain is this more destructive than in Second Amendment litigation.
If the Court refuses to take the cases that matter, then Heller, McDonald, and Bruen become museum pieces—praised as “historic” while states openly devise end-runs around them in real time.
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A Right that cannot be enforced is not a Right in any serious sense. It is a slogan.
The “Rule Of Four” Is Real—But The Strategy Is Realer
We discuss at length in the original article the Supreme Court’s so-called “Rule of Four”—the traditional practice that four Justices may grant certiorari.
This is not a trivial procedural detail. It is supposed to preserve the integrity of the Court’s appellate function by ensuring that a substantial minority may bring a matter before the Court for decision on the merits.
But in Second Amendment cases, the deeper reality is this:
Those Justices who cherish the Natural Law Right codified in the Second Amendment do not, as a general matter, vote to grant review unless they believe they have the votes to win.
And those who detest the Right will happily grant review when they believe they have five votes to shred it.
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This is why docket selection is not “administration.” It is warfare by another name.
Wolford Was Granted—Antonyuk  & Snope Were Denied—And That Is The Story
Many in the pro-Second Amendment community have greeted the Supreme Court’s decision to grant review in Wolford v. Lopez with optimism.
That optimism is misplaced.
Wolford, while not insignificant, is not the decisive confrontation the moment requires. It involves a narrow question within the larger “sensitive places” framework—yet the framework itself is the threat.
The fundamental question is whether the states may “approve” public carry in theory while rendering it impossible in practice by declaring ordinary life a latticework of forbidden zones.
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That is the post-Bruen strategy. And it is precisely why Antonyuk v. James mattered.
Antonyuk Was The Direct Challenge To State Defiance Of Bruen
New York lost Bruen on “proper cause.”
And then New York, enraged and defiant, acted exactly as a hostile government acts when it is told “No” by the Constitution: it searched for a loophole—then built an entire statutory architecture to exploit it.
The “sensitive places” scheme was not incidental. It was deliberate. It was crafted to erase Bruen without admitting it was erasing Bruen.
If the Supreme Court were serious about being the guardian and interpreter of the Constitution, Antonyuk should have been granted review.
The Court denied review.
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That denial was not meaningless. It was a signal.
Snope Was A Vehicle For The “Common Use” Question The Court Keeps Dodging
Maryland’s Snope case sits in the same universe as the recurring semiautomatic ban cases—the question of whether arms in common use may be forbidden because the political class has adopted the dishonest phrase “assault weapon.”
We have seen this pattern before.
Friedman v. Highland Park should have been granted. It was denied. And ever since, the states have interpreted silence as permission to continue probing and pushing.
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If the Court refuses to settle the “common use” question with clarity and force, then the states will continue filing into the void.
Roberts Is Not “One Of Nine” In Practice
Many people speak as if the Chief Justice is merely a vote.
That is naïve.
The Chief Justice sets tone. The Chief Justice influences what is encouraged, what is discouraged, what is slowed, what is contained, and what is treated as “too hot” for the Court to touch.
  • Landmark rulings exist.
  • States defy them.
  • The Court refuses to take the best cases to stop the defiance.
  • The Right is left to be strangled by delay, litigation costs, and sabotage by lower courts.
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One does not need mind-reading to infer intention when behavior repeats itself with consistency.
Public Safety Is Not Personal Safety—And Government Knows It
One of the most important realities—rarely spoken aloud by officials, and almost never pressed by reporters—is that “public safety” and “personal safety” are not the same thing.
The government insists it provides “public safety.”
But the individual is responsible for personal safety, because the government is not generally legally obligated to protect you as an individual.
This is why armed self-defense is not a hobby, not a lifestyle marker, and not a political pose.
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Because an armed citizen is not a subject. He is a sovereign.
Do Not Confuse A Narrow Grant With A Broad Awakening
Do not misread Wolford as proof the Court has “turned a corner.”
The cases that would have forced the Court to confront the true post-Bruen crisis were denied.
That is the controlling fact.
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A Court that will not take the cases that matter most is not protecting the Second Amendment. It is managing it.
Read More as We Make The Case for SCOTUS Avoidance in Depth
This short companion cannot carry the full structure of the argument. The original Arbalest Quarrel article develops it at length.
Read it. Share it. And do not allow yourself to be lulled by procedure.
The destruction of rights in America is accomplished by attrition—by delay—and by the refusal to enforce what has already been declared.
And that is why this matters now.
About The Arbalest Quarrel:
Arbalest Group created The Arbalest Quarrel website to educate the American public about Federal and State firearms control legislation.
For more information, visit: www.arbalestquarrel.com
Arbalest Quarrel
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Offline Mark 79

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Re: GUN POLITICS
« Reply #43 on: January 10, 2026, 11:21:33 PM »
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Offline Mark 79

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Re: GUN POLITICS
« Reply #44 on: January 11, 2026, 12:55:14 AM »
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