2A Newsletter: January 28th

A Supreme Court Justice Retires… What does that mean for your gun rights?

After what seems like just a slew of wins for the 2A community, we knew it wouldn’t last forever. What we didn’t anticipate was another Supreme Court justice vacating their seat so soon. Justice Stephen Breyer has been serving on the SCOTUS since 1994. By strategically timing his retirement, Breyer has created an opportunity for the Biden Administration to appoint as extreme a judge as possible for his replacement who may be vehemently opposed to the 2A rights we are constantly fighting to uphold today.

Before we panic, just remember that when the entire gun community of America came together to reject David Chipman as the ATF Director nominee, we came out on top. We can do the same for the next Supreme Court Justice nominee should their wrongful bias come to light. The key is to stay in touch with your elected representatives in the Senate and to support organizations that will fight for your rights. A few examples include the Firearms Policy Coalition, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Gun Owners of America and many more rifle and pistol associations specific to your home state.

San Jose Enacts First Gun Owner Insurance Law

Last year we covered this story in our newsletter for the week of July 9th when developments of this event first began to unfold. Here’s your refresher — following a mass shooting event at a rail yard in San Jose, last summer the city mayor came up with this new gun control law which would force all gun owners to purchase liability insurance for owning guns, similar to the way we have insurance for driving our cars. Supposedly, this fee would “compensate taxpayers for the emergency medical and police responses to gun-related injuries and deaths.”

At the time, Mayor Liccardo stated that any gun owners who did not comply with this law would have their weapons seized. Last July, the San Jose city council also had not decided what the fee would be for “gun owners’ insurance policies.” As of now, the National Association and National Foundation for Gun Rights are suing the City of San Jose for this unconstitutional gun tax. Hopefully, we can see this turn around before the summer.

Fast forward to this week. That new rule was passed by the San Jose city council and will become effective law on July 25th, 2022. How the ordinance works is like this — gun owning residents of San Jose will be forced to obtain a homeowner’s, renter’s or gun-liability policy that specifically covers losses or damages resulting from negligent or accidental use of their firearm (good luck finding an insurance carrier willing to fix your house for you if you do actually ND). There are other ridiculous stipulations from the “ Gun Harm Reduction Ordinance.”

In addition, gun owners will also have to pay an unclear annual fee to a nonprofit organization that will supposedly distribute the funds to separate groups. The NGO and “groups” have not yet been identified but here’s the real kicker: those groups are supposed to be offering a variety of services to residents who own a firearm or to those who live with someone who does. These services will include suicide-prevention program, gender-based violence services, mental health and addiction services and firearm safety training, according to the city ordinance.

What we have here is a mayor and city council who are drunk over being “first” to infringe upon Americans’ 2A rights in a brand new draconian and dystopian way. Why are any of us making a fuss over this story? Well, San Jose is literally the heart of Silicon Valley (yes, Google is technically in Mountain View but you get the point), where their decisions in the advancement of technology and data analytics control our everyday lives. We would all be remiss to ignore one politician’s crazy ideas and think that there wouldn’t be others across the country who might want to try the same bad idea. This backwards rationale is really nothing more than stark targeting of law abiding citizens, whom are not always wealthy, because of course, the local San Jose criminals will be sure to also line up around the block to get their insurance policies in order like a good neighbor when July arrives.

ATF Moves on Forced Reset Triggers

There’s been a lot of chatter online circling this topic so we want to cut through the noise and give you just the facts. Yes, the ATF did pay Big Daddy Unlimited’s offices a visit and yes they did seize all of their ‘Wide Open Triggers.’ No, the ATF did not raid Rare Breed’s offices.

Why are these two companies in the limelight right now? Well, according to a leaked email that was obtained by Gun Owners of America (GOA), the ATF plans to crack down on all forced reset triggers from manufacturers, distributors and dealers… which, so far, is more than plausible. Last year the ATF went back on their initial determination of the Rare Breed FRT-15 and now consider any AR15 equipped with one to be a machine gun.

So, when ATF field agents show up at a local gun store, the store owners have one of two choices. A) They can voluntarily turn over the triggers at which point the ATF would provide a “ Consent to Forfeiture of Property and Waiver of Notice (ATF F. 3400.1).” The form says that the company is willfully turning over their inventory to the ATF and by doing so release all rights to said property. In turn, the businesses that choose to comply would not be able to sue for the return of the confiscated triggers.

B) The business could refuse to comply but the ATF agents would seize the products anyways per their orders. This route would give the company more legal grounds to sue but then the ATF could clapback and threaten to file for criminal charges against the company’s owner for violating NFA regulations. It’s basically a Catch-22, the next fear would be if or when the ATF will start knocking on your doors to reclaim these triggers from individual gun owners.

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