We are neither surprised, not amused.

Ninth Circuit Rules Suppressors Are Not Second Amendment Arms

The Ninth Circuit just handed gun control lawyers another gift, and it came from exactly the kind of case Second Amendment advocates should dread.

In United States v. João Ricardo DeBorba, the court upheld a stack of federal gun convictions against a man who was unlawfully in the United States, had claimed U.S. citizenship on firearm-related paperwork, was subject to domestic violence no-contact orders, and was caught with firearms, ammunition, and an unregistered suppressor.

Bad cases still make law, and this one may do real damage. The most dangerous part of the ruling is not simply that DeBorba lost. Given the facts, that outcome was hardly surprising. The problem is that the Ninth Circuit went out of its way to say that suppressors, also called silencers, are not “arms” protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment.

The court treated suppressors as optional firearm accessories and said they are not covered because they are not necessary to the ordinary operation of a firearm. In other words, because a gun can technically fire without a suppressor, the court says a suppressor falls outside the Second Amendment.

A suppressor is not some decorative range toy. It protects hearing, reduces blast, improves communication, helps training, and makes shooting safer for the shooter and those nearby. Hunters use them. Instructors use them. Competitive shooters use them. Ordinary Americans use them. In much of the civilized world, suppressors are treated as basic safety equipment, not criminal contraband.

The Second Amendment does not protect only a stripped-down firearm in its most primitive form. It protects the right to keep and bear arms in a way that is useful, effective, and practical. Optics help a shooter hit what he is aiming at. Magazines feed the firearm. Lights help identify a threat. Suppressors help protect hearing and allow safer training and defensive use.

Constitutional attorney and AmmoLand contributor Mark W. Smith of The Four Boxes Diner hammered that point in his video breakdown of the decision. Smith argued that the court ignored the broader meaning of “arms” under Bruen, where an arm includes an instrument that facilitates armed self-defense. As Smith put it, the key is not whether an item is absolutely necessary, but whether it helps facilitate the protected right.

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Extract from a letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright

Monticello in Virginia. June 5. 1824.
…the constitutions of most of our states assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, both fact and law, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed…

More Virginia Counties Announce They Won’t Enforce Spanberger’s ‘Assault Firearms’ Ban

While Virginia’s bans on “assault firearms” and magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds was signed into law on May 14, and is scheduled to go into effect on July 1, it remains to be seen if the bans actually go into effect, and if they do, whether and where they will actually be enforced in the Old Dominion.

As we reported the day Governor Abigail Spanberger signed the clearly unconstitutional ban on some of the most popular firearms and magazines in America, NRA, working with other organizations and two individuals, immediately filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The complaint argues that Virginia’s bans are unconstitutional because they prohibit many of the most commonly possessed arms in the nation. As the U.S. Supreme Court held in District of Columbia v. Heller, a ban on arms “in common use” violates the Second Amendment.

NRA, working again with others, filed a separate suit that same day that challenges the new law in state court. That complaint argues that the bans violate the arms guarantee in Article 1, Section 13 of the Virginia Constitution. It further contends that, because the Virginia Supreme Court has interpreted that provision as coextensive with the Second Amendment, it bars prohibitions on commonly-owned arms.

There have been other legal challenges to these bans, and there may soon be one coming from the Trump administration’s Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, has been leading the charge to file federal challenges to a number of anti-gun laws that violate the protections enshrined in the Second Amendment.

After it was announced that the Virginia bans had been signed, Dhillon quickly posted to X, “See you in court!”

 


How quickly the courts will act on these challenges is anybody’s guess, and regardless of what decisions are handed down, it’s unlikely any of them will be resolved until every step of the appeals process in either the federal or state courts is exhausted. If the courts rule in favor of the Second Amendment or the Virginia arms guarantee, anti-gun Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones will surely appeal. And if any ruling goes the other way, NRA and others will appeal.

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Mike Bales

He’s the President of the United States — not your ex, not your personal villain, and not the cause of your misery.
You don’t have to support him. That’s America.

But if someone is simply backing the sitting President and it makes you rage, cut people off, attack families, or act like garbage — you are the problem.

You’ve turned politics into a personality disorder: nonstop outrage and toddler meltdowns online. Grow up. He won. The sky didn’t fall. Pay your bills, care for your family, touch grass, and move on.

Dropped Wallet Leads Tulsa Police Straight To Burglar Shot By Homeowner

TULSA, Okla. — A Tulsa homeowner did exactly what a law-abiding gun owner is supposed to do when a stranger broke into his house overnight, and the suspected burglar is now recovering from a gunshot wound because of it.

According to News On 6, the break-in happened just before midnight near 21st Street and Mingo Road. The homeowner spotted a man outside on his security cameras, watched him look through windows and then saw him come in through a back door.

This is the part that should stick with every one of us who keeps a firearm for protection. The homeowner came down from the second floor and met the intruder inside his own home. Police said the man turned aggressive, and the homeowner fired a single shot.

The suspect ran off after being shot but dropped his wallet on the way out. Investigators used the identification inside it to track him while officers set up a perimeter around the neighborhood.

When officers found him nearby, police said he fought them and bit one of the officers during the arrest. Tulsa Police Lt. JT Snoddy said the man appeared to be impaired, telling reporters that none of the force applications seemed to faze him at all.

Only after taking him into custody did officers realize he had been shot in the chest. He was taken to a hospital and underwent surgery. Authorities believe he is about 46 years old and have not released his name. The bitten officer was also treated and is expected to be fine.

A man who chose to break into an occupied home at midnight and then square up with the person living there found out why that is a bad idea. The homeowner walked away unharmed. That is the outcome the Second Amendment is built to protect.

Pentagon pushes for battlefield AI, some military leaders urge caution.

The Trump administration is looking to push artificial intelligence in the U.S. military as it faces pressure from military leaders and companies to implement safeguards.

In a recent annual special forces conference in Tampa, Florida, Adm. Frank Bradley, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, told attendees that troops “have to be very careful about how we come to (AI’s) employment and its inspiration into the delivery of lethality.”

“We, as humans, have to have the confidence that … it’s going to deliver violence only where we intend it to be delivered,” Bradley said.

In response to the remarks, a Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Monterey Herald that the Pentagon was focussing on efforts to make “functional battlefield tools” with AI to help troops identify targets quickly.

Meanwhile, U.S. Special Operations Command officials said AI should not be a tool for eradicating targets, but to assist troops to focus on their mission. Sgt. Maj. Andrew Krogman said at the conference that AI could be used for administrative tasks or to modernize workflows.

AI has already been used by the military to identify targets, including the use of Palantir’s Maven Smart System, which integrates Anthropic’s Claude AI to speed up targeting and planning.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is pushing to integrate AI into the military.

Hegseth said he would reject AI models that “won’t allow you to fight wars,” in a recent speech at Elon Musk’s space flight company, SpaceX in south Texas. He also said that military AI systems should operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications.”

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Scott Pelley fired from ’60 Minutes,’ deepening turmoil at CBS News

CBS News fired longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley on Tuesday, a day after he reportedly said Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss was “murdering the show” and accused its new producer of having “slender qualifications” for the job.

The move deepened the turmoil at the nation’s most influential TV news program, days after a leadership overhaul.

Pelley, 68, criticized management Monday during a fiery staff meeting with Nick Bilton, the program’s new executive producer installed by Weiss last week, according to a detailed report on the Status website.

In a termination notice obtained Tuesday night by The Associated Press, Bilton, a technology journalist and filmmaker with no traditional broadcast news experience, accused Pelley of carrying out an “ambush” against him.

“Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” the letter states.

Pelley said in a statement that “60 Minutes” has lost its DNA under new management. He accused them of asking him to “inject falsehoods and bias” into his work, without sharing specific details.

Pelley is accused of a ‘performative display of hostility’
Status, which said it had a recording of the Monday meeting, reported that Pelley had said Weiss was brought in to kill the news outlet, “and she’s doing exactly that.” Weiss was not present for the meeting.

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Insurrection Barbie:

Rev. Rebecca Todd Peters, an ordained Presbyterian Church (USA) minister and professor of religious studies at Elon University in North Carolina. In a sermon, she said: “If Jesus were giving his sermon today, he might also have said, “Blessed are those who end pregnancies, for they will be known for their loving kindness.”

Peters also stated that if Jesus were alive today, he would be a clinic escort or an “abortion doula” holding women’s hands and offering support during abortions. She serves on the Clergy Advocacy Board of Planned Parenthood and personally escorts patients at abortion clinics once a month.

This is not Christianity. This is literally insane. Progressive Christianity is an oxymoron.

BLUF
There’s no other way to interpret this, and not a single Democrat will distance themselves from Krugman’s comments or condemn them. In fact, they’ll repeat them, as they have countless times in the past.

Paul Krugman Calls for a Purging of the United States, and Guess Who He’s Talking About

Former New York Times reporter Paul Krugman, who worked for the outlet for more than two decades, is clearly grasping for relevance in his retirement and he’s doing so by calling for violence against Trump supporters.

The guy who once said the Internet’s impact on the economy would be no different than the fax machine thinks the country needs a ‘thorough purging’ and he’s targeting MAGA as the group that needs to go.

“We need to de-fang Trump as much as possible and make sure that neither he nor anybody who follows in his footsteps has power after the next two elections,” Krugman said. So they’re already laying the groundwork to claim that whatever Republican succeeds President Trump will somehow be even worse than President Trump, who was literally Hitler, according to Democrats.

Krugman wasn’t finished, however.

“But beyond that, we really need to do a thorough purging of the United States,” Krugman continued, “we need a de-MAGAfication and … I’m not going over the top by using a word that’s very similar to the de-Nazification that we pursued successfully after World War II in Germany.”

Right, and Krugman would probably vote for Graham Platner if he lived in Maine.

Here’s the entire video.

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