Housekeeping

• Due to unavoidable circumstances, there MAY not be a 2A newsletter next week.

Trumped

• Civic Lesson

Want to see a murder?

Libs in the White House press corps screamed at Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller that Elon Musk is “unelected!”

What happens next is a fatality.

I promise you – this is the single best video on the internet today:pic.twitter.com/Nxcw0qTtj1

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 20, 2025

• The Department of Commerce stopped issuing gun export licenses around the beginning of the month, according to multiple sources. The department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees firearms exporting, issued a hold without action order for all export licenses on February 5th. It did so without warning, public explanation, or even private communication with many of the affected companies.
• President Donald Trump has appointed Kash Patel, the recently confirmed new FBI Director, as the acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, marking a major shift in the agency’s leadership. Trump has also appointed conservative commentator, former Secret Service agent, and staunch Second Amendment advocate Dan Bongino as the new Deputy Director of the FBI. Patel was sworn in as ATF acting director on Monday.

• This move follows the unceremonious firing of ATF General Counsel Pamela Hicks by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who cited legitimate concerns that the agency’s legal team was “targeting gun owners.” Hicks, who served in the Department of Justice for nearly 28 years, including three years as ATF Chief Counsel, was removed from her position as the Chief Counsel of ATF and her employment with the Department of Justice was terminated. Pro-Second Amendment groups and gun rights advocates were quick to celebrate Hicks’ departure, viewing it as a necessary step in dismantling the ATF’s aggressive anti-gun policies under the previous administration. GOA noted that Hicks “oversaw the enforcement of every Biden infringement of the Second Amendment since taking the position in 2021.”
• The appointment of FBI Director Kash Patel as acting head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is bringing calls for an overhaul of the embattled federal gun agency, but in order to bring about real change, gun control laws must be altered or even repealed as well. – Dave Workman

Legislation

• North Carolina Solons Consider Permitless Carry
• Grassroots North Carolina is currently seeking signatures for a petition supporting constitutional carry in NC. You can find it at the website grnc.org which also has lots of other information. Apparently signers don’t have to be NC residents.

Litigation

• New US Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of Staff is Chad Mizelle, who is married to Judge Katherine Mizelle, who President Trump had appointed during his first term. Judge Mizelle ruled a year ago in the case United States v. Ayala. She ruled in favor of the Second Amendment in the case of Emmanuel Ayala, a truck driver with a concealed carry permit, who was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 930(a) and a postal regulation (39 C.F.R. § 232.1(l)) for carrying a handgun in his vehicle while dropping off mail at a post office. She ruled that the government failed to show that a blanket ban on firearms in post offices aligned with historical traditions of firearm regulation from the Founding Era or Reconstruction. The United States appealed the case, and the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has taken no action.
• The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has denied Pennsylvania’s petition for an en banc hearing of the case Lara v. Paris, a challenge to an unconstitutional Commonwealth law banning the carrying of firearms by 18 to 20-year-old residents of the Key Stone State during a declared emergency.
• US District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island has ruled that the federal law banning gun ownership by people who use illegal substances (marijuana in this case) is unconstitutional as applied to two defendants who challenged the prohibition in court. McConnell rejected a separate Second Amendment challenge by one of the defendants to the ban on felons owning firearms. That prohibition, he said, was better grounded in both historical precedent and public safety. The case is US v. Worster and Carl.
• SCOTUS & Grassroots updates.

NRA case

• Former NRA EVP Wayne LaPierre has paid up what the court ordered, but is appealing the judgment. Former CFO Wilson Phillips has not.

Enemies

• New documents reveal that the FBI was systematically using a so-called “NICS Indices Self-Submission Form” to strip individuals of their right to own firearms, often using intimidation tactics. This thing seems to be growing.
• Violence Policy Center.

Friends?

• United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) goes woke?

DGUs

• Recently Released Convict Shot by Oklahoma City Mother After Kicking in Her Door
• The Armed Citizen:
  • American Rifleman – February 21, 2025
  • American Rifleman – February 24, 2025

The Only Ones

• Former Clear Creek County (CO) Deputy Andrew Buen has been convicted of criminally negligent homicide in the shooting death of a 22-year-old man in distress who called 911 for help after his car got stuck in a small mountain community.
• SWAT team raided the wrong Denver apartment and traumatized two young girls, lawsuit says

Crime & Criminals

• The Myth of Red State Gun Violence.
• Recidivism and Violence. “77% of people heading for the hoosegow have five or more prior arrests. Given that 25% of them are going down the river for a violent offense, odds are at least one of those priors is for violence as well.” Full report.

Newsletters

• The Rangemaster and ACLDN March newsletters are out.
  • (There is an excellent re-hash of the appropriate and legal use of force for self defense. Read it.)
  • (Caveat: The “Legal Considerations When Selecting Self-Defense Ammunition” item refers heavily to the Evan Marshall and Ed Sanow shooting studies on handgun stopping power. I have those studies and their critiques and have myself read and reviewed them in great depth. While the results may or may not be valid, they are unsupported because the statistical methodology in those studies is basically and fatally flawed, because they threw out a large body of evidence that could (or would) have influenced the resulting conclusions. The raw information therein should be taken on face value, but the calculated conclusions should be considered completely unsupported. Just my opinion.)

Tactics & Stuff

• Sudden knife attacks by illegal-immigrant Islamic terrorists upon people thought to be Jewish are now an almost every-week occurrence in Western Europe.
• Pepper Spray. Recommended: POM, Fox Labs, Sabre Red MK6.
• Lessons from police gunfights. “My attitude was: If you shoot at me, I’m going to kill you if I can. Of the nine people I shot, every one of them had a gun and in every instance they had used it or were about to use it. I wouldn’t take them into custody and I don’t give a d*** who criticized me for it.”
• “I shouldn’t have to…”
• Mounting Standards: 2025 Guide to Red Dot Footprints.
• Improvised guns & ammo.
• We have a report that a group of veterinarians and animal welfare providers in Louisiana are opposed to the state’s decision to resume human executions using nitrogen hypoxia. These folks say that the method is banned or abandoned for euthanizing animals because it is inhumane, and therefore ask why it should be considered acceptable for human executions. It seems simple to me – the animals usually didn’t do anything wrong, and the humans usually did.
• The story of the .40. For the newcomers.

Products

• Silencer Central has a 10-day buy-one-get-one-free sale on every suppressor it has in stock. The offer is simple, buy any suppressor – regardless of brand or price – and customers can receive a BANISH 22K-V2 rimfire suppressor for free. The sale runs until March 5.
• Good Guns Cheap.
• Weatherby has announced the return of the new Standard Short Action Mark V Deluxe Varmintmaster rifle. This new action is slightly longer than the original Varmintmaster action and compatible with the .308 Win family of cartridges. Weatherby is also bringing back .224 WBY Magnum ammunition, which is now hand-loaded at the company’s Sheridan, Wyoming facility, and is now an available chambering in the Varmintmaster.
• Bear Creek Arsenal has AR10 uppers and rifles in a new bolt action style, available in .308 Winchester, 6.5 Creedmoor, .243 Winchester, and .22-250. BCA already had a line of bolt action AR15 rifles and uppers. We don’t know why, unless California.