Tag: Second Amendment News

Self-Defense: Another “Luxury” the Poor Can Do Without

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“to the point about pricing poor people out of owning firearms, I think poor people don’t benefit from owning firearms.” Dr. Anthony D. Douglas

Many years ago, Otis McDonald, a 76-year old retiree living in a high-crime area of Chicago testified that he had “been robbed numerous times in his Morgan Park home; [he’d] witnessed too many crimes to count and …been threatened with pistols around his home.” The gangbangers and drug dealers had “taken over” his neighborhood, and he wanted to keep a handgun in his own home to protect himself, something that Chicago law at the time prohibited. Mr. McDonald was the named plaintiff in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the landmark challenge to the handgun ban, and his experiences helped persuade the United States Supreme Court to overturn the law as a violation of the Second Amendment.

The Court dismissed Chicago’s and other municipalities’ arguments as “at war with our central holding in Heller: that the Second Amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense within the home.”     A University of Chicago trauma doctor, testifying before the Illinois House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, is seeking to turn back the clock. Responding to concerns over pricing lower-income gun buyers out of the market, Dr. Anthony D. Douglas declared that “to the point about pricing poor people out of owning firearms, I think poor people don’t benefit from owning firearms.” This “concern about poor people being able to, are benefit from owning firearms or being put out of being able to afford firearms is, I think, we are a little bit distracted from what poor people and poor communities actually need.” 

Dr. Douglas is “the mastermind behind HB3320/ SB2279,” the Responsibility in Firearm Legislation (RIFL) Act. This 122-page legislation would, if passed, require firearm manufacturers in Illinois to obtain a RIFL license, and distribute license fees proceeds to “victims of firearms” (“firearm injury” means any gun-related injury, suicide or homicide). License fees would be set at an amount estimated to be “equal to the public health costs and financial burdens borne by the State and its residents as a result of firearm injuries,” using the incidence of firearm injuries in the previous year; however, in the first year the total annual aggregate fee would be capped at $866,000,000.  Each licensee would be required to pay the portion of the total annual aggregate fee equal to the market share of the firearm manufacturer. A program established under the law would compensate “victims of firearms” for all direct costs incurred as a result of firearm injury for up to three years post-event, which payments would be tax-exempt. Anyone suffering a firearm injury (including out-of-state residents), their next of kin, legal guardian, dependent, first-degree relative, second-degree relative, and employer could qualify as “eligible victims.”

License fees, in reality a “punishment tax,” would add at least $1,600 to the cost of each firearm sold in the state, according to a lobbyist for the Illinois State Rifle Association. Guns for self-defense or subsistence hunting would become unaffordable luxuries for the poor and eventually, for just about everyone, once the legislation destroys the Second Amendment in Illinois.  Dr. Douglas and other bill supporters argue that the gun industry should “pay for the bloodshed it helps to create” by shifting “the direct costs away from taxpayers and place[] them where they belong: on the gun industry.” Manufacturers would “pay according to how frequently their products are recovered in injuries and deaths in Illinois. If their products are never recovered, they pay nothing…The logic that ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’ is passé.” Besides driving up prices, and creating new fees and bureaucracy, the bills seek to override the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which protects the heavily-regulated gun industry from liability for a third party’s criminal misuse of their products.

The legislation also ignores the pesky logical issue that violent crime is, in fact, the product of gangs and criminals and enabled by soft-on-crime public officials advocating “non-punitive” justice, all of which have nothing to do with the gun industry and none of whom will share the financial burden imposed by the RIFL Act. An inconvenient truth at odds with Dr. Douglas’s narrative is that Chicago’s poor and minorities, in common with those throughout America, remain the most at risk of crime and violence and therefore have, if anything, an even more pressing need for the tools of self-defense than most. The Illinois Policy Institute, a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) research organization, notes that minority communities in the city’s South Side and West Side face poverty rates “of nearly three times the citywide average,” and an analysis shows, further, that “low-income areas of the city and Black and Hispanic Chicagoans are much more likely to experience crime.”

Source: NRA-ILA | Self-Defense: Another “Luxury” the Poor Can Do Without

And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.
Ephesians 4:32

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Trump Administration Continues to Deliver for Gun Owners with Recent Initiatives

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Amid a steady stream of headlines highlighting anti-gun legislative proposals in the states, ongoing litigation battles, and regulatory uncertainty, there is also good news to report on the Second Amendment front, courtesy of the Trump Administration. Recent news from the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and the United States Postal Service (USPS) provide reason for optimism. While the broader landscape of gun rights remains complex and contentious, important shifts at the federal level signal real progress is continuing. Last week, the USPS announced a proposed rule to modify its regulations to allow certain firearms to be legally shipped through the mail.

This legal reassessment is in response to the recent Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel opinion concluding that the nearly 100-year old federal prohibition on mailing “concealable” firearms is unconstitutional. The proposed rule includes important clarifications and policy changes: Revisions to Publication 52 specify clear definitions of “mailable firearms” and “nonmailable firearms” consistent with OLC’s opinion. The proposed revisions expand the scope of mailable firearms compared to the existing regulations by allowing lawful handguns to be mailed under the same terms and conditions as lawful rifles and shotguns. These conditions continue to require, among other things, that mailed firearms be unloaded. Additionally, otherwise nonmailable handguns will remain mailable between authorized persons consistent with Section 1715.

The rulemaking process allows for public comments to be submitted until May 4, 2026. While the usual option of submitting comments through the government’s online portal does not apply in this case, emails will be accepted. USPS advises: “If sending comments by email, include the name and address of the commenter and send to PCFederalRegister@usps.gov, with a subject line of ‘Shipping Firearms.’”  Also, in news that our nation’s veterans have long deserved to hear, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), have undertook coordinated action to remove from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) records of VA beneficiaries who were wrongly reported as prohibited persons solely because they were assigned a fiduciary to assist in management of their benefits. In February, the VA announced it would end this decades-old practice.

NRA-ILA can now report that, according to sources within the government, updates to NICS were made on March 6. Additionally, letters have begun being mailed to the fiduciaries of affected beneficiaries providing formal notice of the steps being taken to end this longstanding injustice. Those letters note: Under a directive from the Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs, VA will: Work with the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to remove all names previously reported on this basis from NICS. End all future reporting of fiduciary program participants to NICS. Update VA policies to reflect this change. And, finally, to cap off the recent positive momentum, last week, Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for DOJ’s Civil Rights Division (CRIT), announced a focused effort to hire and train more lawyers specifically for CRIT’s Second Amendment section. 

A report from The Washington Times stated, “her office’s goal is to have all state regulations that are inconsistent with pro-Second Amendment cases be struck down, settled or withdrawn by the time she leaves her post.” While certainly an ambitious agenda, Dhillon is clearly invested in making progress on this historic undertaking. It has been just over one year since President Donald Trump issued his Executive Order on Protecting Second Amendment Rights, which launched a federal review of prior regulations and actions that have restricted lawful firearm ownership to ensure constitutional compliance. That audit and reset effort has been paying dividends ever since. DOJ’s commitment to expanding its legal firepower to counter state infringements will only strengthen its ability to continue the campaign against unlawful restrictions on Second Amendment rights. Ultimately, these latest actions reflect a broader federal willingness to treat the right to keep and bear arms as a core civil liberty demanding affirmative protection through policymaking and the courts.

Source: NRA-ILA | Trump Administration Continues to Deliver for Gun Owners with Recent Initiatives

For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.
Philippians 1:29

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