A federal judge in Delaware has ruled the state’s ban on possessing unserialized firearms and the private manufacturing of guns violates the Second Amendment, while keeping in place the state’s laws that forbid the dissemination of computer-aided design files or other code or instructions used in 3D printing gun parts.
U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika also upheld the state’s prohibition on “knowingly transport[ing], ship[ping], transfer[ring], or sell[ing] an unfinished firearm frame or receiver,” ruling that the “Distribution ban” as she called it does not impose any burden on keeping or bearing unserialized firearms.
For the most part, though, the plaintiffs were victorious in their arguments, with Noreika finding the possession and manufacturing bans facially unconstitutional under the Second Amendment and granting a permanent injunction that applies to the named plaintiffs, including Firearms Policy Coalition members.
The judge had previously granted a preliminary injunction against enforcing those provisions, so in that respect Thursday’s ruling isn’t all that surprising. Still, it’s always good to see a federal judge treat the Second Amendment with the respect that it deserves.
“Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something happens to me, I want you to know I’ve never been happier. You made my life.” —Rick Rescorla, on the phone to his wife from the South Tower
September 11, 2001 was a day unlike any other.
You read that date right. After weeks of research done completely behind my girlfriend’s back, I pulled out my Visa and put the recommended two months’ salary into a diamond engagement ring. This being (barely) the 21st Century, and me being a technophile seemingly since birth, of course I did the whole thing online.
The ring would FedEx to me overnight from Seattle to Colorado Springs the next day, but I wasn’t really concerned about how long it would take. I had an engagement plan brewing that revolved around her birthday in November, so there was plenty of time. Melissa honestly had no idea about any of it, but that’s a story for another day.
I stayed up well past my customary midnight bedtime. Because, yes, I was more than a little excited to get the tracking number that would make everything seem that much more real. That’s why I was still dead asleep when the phone rang at the most uncivilized time of 7:45 a.m.
There was probably as much irritation as sleep in my voice when I said, “Hello?”
“Turn on the TV,” my mom said without any introduction.
“Which channel?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, s***,” I may or may not have said out loud, before leaping out of bed, running down to the ground floor of my little townhouse, and turning on the TV. And there they were, the Twin Towers, burning and spitting out incomprehensible plumes of smoke.
Mom filled me in quickly on what little she knew, but it was clear that barbarians had attacked us in the most dastardly way — and at the heart of the world’s greatest city.
Too little sleep and too much coffee and far too much shock don’t exactly add up to perfect memories, but one moment still stands out clearly these 25 years later.
“Where’s the tower?” I asked Mom, and it must have been right around 8 a.m. when the South Tower collapsed. We tried to puzzle it out, even with all that smoke — dear God, there was so much, and what we couldn’t know was how much of it was dust from the collapsed building — we should have been able to see a freaking skyscraper on TV.
But it was gone. Half an hour later, the North Tower gave up its struggle to remain standing and joined its twin.
Later we would learn of the heroes who rose to the occasion of 9/11. The New York City firefighters who gave all. The prescient Morgan Stanley vice president of security, Rick Rescorla, who spent years training the employees under his care for such an event — and who then died trying to save just a few more when the South Tower fell. The civilians of Flight 93 who sacrificed themselves rather than allow their plane to be used in yet another attack. The rescue efforts at the struck Pentagon. And so many others.
There would be hell to pay after, and there was.
But first… trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.
It’s been a quarter of a century, but some scenes from that morning have lost none of their power. The jumpers still fill me with equal measures of sorrow, anger, shock, and even understanding.
Watch. I insist:
In all, around 200 people jumped or fell, or roughly one person either falling or jumping every 30 seconds for more than an hour and a half between the first hit and the second collapse. The narrator in this clip called them “the only visible fatalities in a day that claimed thousands.”
The World Trade Center, particularly the Twin Towers, said something about New York City, about the United States of America, that no other country could match.
We built the world’s tallest building in the world’s greatest city — and we built another one just like it right next door.
Because we could.
The Towers defined the glorious New York City skyline from when I first really became aware of it at the ripe old age of seven during our nation’s Bicentennial celebration. They were as permanent as any other fixture you could imagine, except possibly the Moon.
Then somebody else decided to knock the Towers down because their god told them to. They couldn’t build, but they sure knew how to destroy. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda had a 7th Century theocratic mindset with a postmodern sadist’s ability to imagine all-new ways to murder, using a superior civilization’s own tools against it.
If we’ve learned anything in the last quarter century, it’s that bin Laden’s vision is murderously and frustratingly common.
“No more forever wars.”
I wish.
Tell that to countless imams in the so-called Dar al-Salam(House of Peace) and their followers. But they won’t listen because to them, we live in the Dar al-Harb (House of War).
Sorry, but those are the facts. Islam has “bloody borders,” as historian Samuel Huntington warned us in 1993 — the year of the first Muslim attack on the World Trade Center — and you can’t build a wall against airliners, drones, or nuclear-tipped missiles.
The best we can hope for is a deadly game of whack-a-mole. The worst? My hope in 2001 was that we could subdue the worst elements of Dar al-Salam without resorting to nuclear weapons — mostly because I don’t want us becoming them. That’s still my hope.
Hope is not a plan, nor is it a prediction.
We’ve gone 25 years without another 9/11. No matter what mistakes we made in Afghanistan, Iraq, or perhaps even now in Iran (the jury is still out), that one simple fact stands as a testament that we’ve sure as hell gotten an awful lot right since approximately 9/12/2001.
Let us speak now of New York City on 9/11/2026.
There’s a new tower near enough where the Twin Towers once stood, and I suppose it’s technically more attractive than they ever were. But what One World Trade Center adds in grace and sparkle, it lacks in sheer impressive authority. For that, you must visit the 9/11 memorial that leaves in place the footprints of the original towers, gone 25 years now.
Also, I hate the name. The dreamy “One World” haze of the post-Cold War collapsed with the towers on 9/11, and I’d banish that phrase from the English language if I could.
But those are mere nits compared to the city’s current mayor, Zohran Mamdani, the previously ne’er-do-well son of prosperous “migrants” from India via Uganda. Mamdani is both Muslim and socialist, representing the two most powerful and anti-American theologies to be found anywhere in the world today — and now even in Gracie Mansion.
“We noticed the smirk as Mayor Mamdani made sure that a pen used to sign a commemoration for the 9/11 victims’ families was publicly handed, not to a family member, but to a man who acted as an attorney for a terrorist,” PJ Media’s own Victoria Taft wrote earlier this week, and if she were writing fiction, a sharp editor would dismiss it as too wildly unbelievable.
But that’s not all.
Mamdani’s socialist policies will likely burn themselves out, as these things do. But his attempts at rewriting history — at recasting Muslims as the real victims of 9/11 — could prove to have real staying power, as my PJ colleagues have reported for more than a year.
Now, Mamdani chose this of all weeks to release 170,000 pages of internal reports “that show officials misled people about the safety of the air around Ground Zero after the September 11 terror attacks,” as The Independent put it.
Of course the air was poisoned. Anyone with eyes knew that. Our first responders went in anyway, and we owe them whatever they require. Nobody disputes any of that. That the city kept quiet all these years is hardly a point of pride, and I wouldn’t make such a fuss were it not for Mamdani’s timing.
When Mamdani said, “People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” it was his way of making things right. It’s his way of diminishing the heroic efforts of the city’s leadership in the hours and weeks after 9/11 — a virtual tearing down of statues, if you will.
“Every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right,” George Orwell wrote in 1984.
These are the actions of a Bolshevik seizing power, or an occupying army. Or, you know, the Mayor of New York City on the 25th anniversary of the city’s most horrific day.
Mamdani is, however, what a plurality of the people who bothered to vote chose, so what are you going to do? Apparently the city not only recovered from the shock of 9/11, but got a bad case of amnesia, too.
The enemy isn’t just inside the gates; he’s taken up residence in the halls of power.
But back to 9/11/2001.
At some point during that terrible day, it finally dawned on me that the air travel halt included the FedEx plane that might or might not already have my bride-to-be’s engagement ring loaded up — my entire future wrapped up in a tiny box that was grounded at some airport a thousand miles away.
A week later, the flights resumed and the ring arrived.
Imagine that your country is at war, you’re sitting on the sofa at the end of the day with the love of your life, and there’s an engagement ring stashed in the gun safe. You have one of those perfect moments together, and all you want to do is go get the ring and pop the question.
But you have a plan, so you let the moment pass. And in the next moment you’re back to dreading the next 9/11.
Her birthday arrives exactly on schedule, the plan comes together, and in that perfect moment she says yes.
9/11 couldn’t derail my proposal, but it was the start of a new career.
I checked out Andrew Sullivan’s blog that day — I’d read him since his days at The New Republic — and Sully led readers to a brand-new site called Instapundit.
Glenn Reynolds instantly became a regular read, and after a few weeks, I decided I’d launch a blog of my own just as soon as the engagement surprise/birthday/Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year’s madness was over.
“In January,” I told my fiancée around Christmas, “I’m going to start a blog.”
“A what?” she replied.
Yeah, it was that long ago.
And yet writing these words, watching those videos, it still feels like yesterday.
We mustn’t forget, but we also shouldn’t wallow. So that’s enough of 9/11 for now, and maybe enough for the next 25 years.
One last thing.
I was young when I started this, and I’ll be old before I stop — if then. All of us will continue looking back at that day, from time to time, but perhaps what’s most remarkable is how much we still look forward. Islamic terrorists were able to alter New York City’s skyline, but they couldn’t put so much as a dent in this American’s hopes.
Zohran Mamdani claims that he was the real victim on 9/11.
REMINDER: 25 years ago today, nearly 3,000 people were murdered.
Zohran Mamdani’s memory of that morning?
A teacher pulled him and another Muslim student out of class and said they might get bullied.…
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Robin Duppstadt was working in the family general store with her sister-in-law Stacy. Suddenly she started receiving a flurry of calls telling her two planes had hit the World Trade Center.
“We called our other sister-in-law and asked her to bring us a television so we could watch the news while we were working. Before she got there we heard this whoosh sound followed shortly by a very loud thud,” she said.
Off in the distance there was smoke. “I knew in my gut what happened in New York and Washington also had just happened here,” Duppstadt said.
Local first responders, including Stacy’s brother, rushed to the scene. That whoosh and thud turned out to be United Airlines Flight 93, which had slammed into the earth at the speed of 575 miles per hour, landing in a grassy area used for both farming and strip mining. It was the only hijacked plane on Sept. 11 that didn’t hit its intended, symbolic target.
In the days, months and years that followed, it was discovered that the passengers and crew of Flight 93 believed the plane was heading toward the White House or the Capitol and, to stop that tragedy, they revolted against the four hijackers in midair. All 40 of them died along with their captors.
Duppstadt and her sister-in-law closed the store early that day and went straight to the local school to collect her three children. She went home and held them close.
“You never think something would happen in a place like here. You hope if it does the community comes together.”
Officials examine the crater on Sept. 11, 2001, at the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa.AFP via Getty Images
Officials oversee the scene at the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in a field near Shanksville on Sept. 11, 2001.AFP via Getty Images
The upper level of the 9/11 memorial in Shanksville called “Crescent of Embrace.” Stephen Yang“You never think something would happen in a place like here,” Duppstadt said.
“Crescent of Embrace” was designed by Paul and Milena Murdoch.Stephen Yang
On the morning of September 11, 2001, just 15 minutes after hearing the alarm, the FDNY’s elite Rescue Company 2—Lieutenant Peter Martin and firefighters William Lake, Daniel Libretti, John Napolitano, Lincoln Quappe, Kevin O’Rourke, and Edward Rall—arrived at the unfolding World Trade Center tragedy.
All seven were killed when the building collapsed. In all, 2,977 lives were lost that day and hundreds have died from illnesses related to the attack’s aftermath.
25 years.
A quarter of a century.
Relative timeframe;
December 7th 1966 to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941
Time is passing. Yet, for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children. — George W. Bush
In a series of coordinated attacks, moslem Al Qaeda terrorists hijack 4 passenger jet aircraft and use them to crash into towers 1 & 2 of the World Trade Center in New York City, and the Pentagon, killing 2,977 people. The passengers of the 4th jet, United Airlines Flight 93, attempt to retake it from the hijackers, and succeed in keeping the hijackers from completing their mission to crash it into the Capitol Building in Washington D.C., who instead crash it in Pennsylvania.
Four years ago in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court said the Second Amendment precludes states from requiring that people demonstrate a “special need” before they are allowed to carry handguns in public for self-defense. But it added that “nothing in our analysis should be interpreted to suggest the unconstitutionality” of licensing regimes “designed to ensure only that those bearing arms in the jurisdiction are, in fact, ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens.'”
Two pending cases raise interesting questions about the constraints that Bruen imposes on state carry-permit policies. In Johnson v. Jacobson, a long-haul trucker with carry permits issued by Florida and Georgia is asking the Supreme Court to reject Minnesota’s insistence that he also obtain a license from that state if he wants to bear arms there. And in Pratt v. Westbrook, an unsuccessful carry permit applicant is asking the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts to hold that the state’s “suitability” requirement violates the Second Amendment.
Jeffrey Johnson, who is represented by the Liberty Justice Center (LJC), hauls cargo “across the United States and makes regular, annual trips to or through Minnesota,” according to the Supreme Court petition he filed on Tuesday. “Because of the dangers posed to long-haul truck drivers, Johnson always carries a handgun with him for self-defense. But when he travels to Minnesota, state law requires him to unload his weapon and secure it in a container because Minnesota does not grant firearm license reciprocity to fifteen states, including Florida and Georgia.”
That situation, the LJC argues, is inconsistent with the Second Amendment. “Once a person proves he is a law-abiding citizen, he is entitled to carry a gun in public for self-defense,” says LJC Senior Counsel Ryan Morrison. “Constitutional rights, the Second Amendment included, do not require someone to prove their worthiness to exercise their civil liberties over and over again. Forcing someone to carry a Rolodex of firearm licenses to maintain his constitutional rights across the nation reduces the Second Amendment to second-class status and subjects it to an entirely different body of rules than the other rights secured by the Constitution.”
A St. Louis resident who uses a wheelchair faces immediate eviction following a lobby shooting that police classified as an act of self-defense against an armed intruder.
Recently, Torrey Holliday received notice that he was being kicked out of public housing in St. Louis after shooting at the would-be robber.
The St. Louis Housing Authority terminated the lease under its Admissions and Continued Occupancy Policy, which permits the agency to end the agreement for conduct threatening resident or staff safety. While police and prosecutors treat Torrey Holliday as a robbery victim, who acted in self-defense, housing management cited front lobby surveillance footage showing him firing his gun and putting others at risk.
“I woke up the next morning, they not even trying to ask me, ‘Am I alright? What happened? Is it OK?’ Nothing,” Holliday toldFOX 2. “All they hit me with was a big (expletive) package saying, ‘You got to be out.’”
As reported by the St. Louis Housing Authority, federal privacy regulations limit public discussion of individual tenancies, but administrative lease enforcement remains separate from criminal investigations.
Bullet holes remain visible in the apartment lobby where Holliday retreated from the suspect.
“Good thing I did have my weapon on me or else I wouldn’t be here to talk about none of this,” Torrey Holliday told FOX 2.
He stated that management enforcement ignored the lack of building security.
“I had the gun because the building, they not protecting (us),” he said. “They don’t got the guards downstairs.”
He also maintained that while staff knew he carried a firearm, lobby signage only prohibited smoking and loitering.
Neighbors argued that the enforcement ignored situational context.
“He did break the gun policy,” Marvin McGee told the local station. “But still, look at his condition. Somebody messed with him. He didn’t mess with nobody.”
Keisha Holliday, his mother, said that her son faced punishment for protecting himself.
“You can see him kind of reeling away from the guy, you understand what I’m saying?” Keisha Holliday told FOX 2. “But he just kept coming at him. So, of course, what I want my son to do to always defend himself.”
The Independent has contacted the St. Louis Housing Authority for comment.
MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) – The Mobile County District Attorney’s Office is now reviewing a possible self-defense case after Mobile police say a homeowner in west Mobile shot and killed an intruder.
All of this happened the night of Sept. 7 after 9. MPD officers and homicide detectives were gathering evidence inside a home on Calgary Drive after responding to multiple shots fired.
Investigators say 37-year-old David Lee Jr. broke into the home through a window. That’s when police say the homeowner shot and killed him.
One street over, several police cruisers sat in a business parking lot. When FOX10 News asked why officers were there, we were told to go to the scene on Calgary Drive for information. MPD has not said why officers were staged here.
One neighbor said it’s sad someone died, but they believe the homeowner did what they had to do to protect their family.
Less than 24 hours after the shooting, a biohazard cleanup crew was parked in the home’s driveway.
As of tonight, no charges have been filed.
Stand your ground law
Under Alabama’s stand your ground law, a homeowner does not have to retreat before using force against someone who breaks into their home.
That law could play a role as the DA’s office decides what’s next.
We’ve requested the 911 transcripts and are waiting to hear back. We’ll update you as we learn more.
President Donald Trump’s Solicitor General D. John Sauer is asking the Supreme Court of the United States to grant him ten minutes to argue in favor of AR-15 rifles when the Court weighs the constitutionality of “assault weapons” bans.
On June 30, 2026, Breitbart News reported that SCOTUS agreed to hear Grant v. Higgins, a case centering on whether AR-15 ownership is protected by the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. A second case, consolidated with Grant v. Higgins, is Viramontes v. Cook County, and it centers on Cook County’s “assault weapons” ban.
Oral arguments re: AR-15s and AR-15 ownership will take place before SCOTUS on December 2, 2026. The Solicitor General is seeking time before the Court to contend that bans on AR-15s are unconstitional.
FPC LEGAL UPDATE: The federal government has asked the Supreme Court for permission to join the oral arguments in our "assault weapon" lawsuit (in support of us). https://t.co/XgJYe8Y5pvpic.twitter.com/WBFahWPaVt
In the motion for time before SCOTUS, Solicitor General Sauer wrote, “These cases present the question whether a categorical ban on the possession of AR-15 semiautomatic rifles infringes the right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The United States has filed a brief as amicus curiae supporting petitioners, arguing that such a ban is unconstitutional.”
By the way, anyone on a jury who convicts someone for destroying a flock camera is a communist. – unattributed
Recently, another internet kerfuffle over – nothing, really.
The premise is that someone, somewhere carries a semiauto pistol for self-protection and carries it half-loaded.
Bless his heart.
The arguments were long and loud, in the style of the information two-track (through a farm field), and, in the end, no resolution was found.
While going over the various (emotional, non-reasoned) arguments, I found some gems, paraphrased here as I don’t have permission to hold denizens of the digital world up to scorn and ridicule.
The original poster noted that one side of the issue are, functionally, NDPs. Kind of like “non-player characters,” NDP is a Chuck Taylor term for “non-dedicated personnel.” Those are the kind with only the least passing familiarity/skills in the carry of firearms. A “Master-“ class shooter, according to his response, noted that he carries in Condition Three (“chamber empty, full magazine, hammer (if so equipped) down”) for personal protection, not on the range.
Because you’re an expert in competing in certain range games makes you as proficient in personal security as the typical gun writer is knowledgeable about brain surgery.
The cases of Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins are, in essence, one and the same. They challenge assault weapon bans in Illinois and Connecticut, respectively, and they’re perhaps set to be one of the most important Supreme Court decisions of our lifetimes. Yes, bigger than Bruen, Heller, or McDonald.
I don’t say that lightly.
But they matter. They matter so much that pro-gun groups are dropping their amicus briefs. We’ve noted a few already, but I’ve got two more for you today.
First, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
From a statement sent to Bearing Arms:
>“In our brief,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “we take a scholarly journey through the history of arms regulation; not just firearms, but other arms including swords, knives and other lawful arms. Nowhere in history is there any justification for outright bans of any arms, only the regulation of their misuse. As we explain, AR-15-style rifles serve recognized lawful purposes for home and personal defense, hunting, target shooting, organized competition and pest and predator control.”
Studies estimate that firearms labeled “assault weapons” account for well under one percent of violent crimes, the brief says, while such firearms are “commonly possessed safeguards used for lawful purposes—not instruments outside lawful use and not identified with violent criminality.”
“It is gratifying to see that CCRKBA is in very good company with our historical amicus brief,” Gottlieb said. “We are taking sides with 27 state attorneys general, with the U.S. Department of Justice, with law enforcement groups and literally ever other major firearms civil rights organization in the country. We all know what is at stake when the Court hears oral arguments in December, and the Citizens Committee is proud to stand in support of the Constitution and we are confident the Second Amendment will prevail.”
A similar stat about these weapons being used in one percent of crimes was echoed in a statement by Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership.
It was followed by this:
“AR15s and other modern sporting rifles are indisputably in common use for all manner of lawful purposes by the American people and, therefore, cannot be banned,” said JPFO Projects Director, James Jones. “Anti-liberty groups who want to abolish the Second Amendment and the right it protects have tried for years to ban one class of firearm after another providing nothing but false rhetoric and misguided emotion as evidence to justify the unjust prohibitions. We’re confident the Supreme Court will see through their schemes and will rely on the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment.”
Jones is 100 percent correct, for the record.
The term “lawful purposes” isn’t limited to self-defense use. It means any lawful purpose, from shooting three-gun competitions to a day at the range to even sitting there and looking at it because it looks dope. Those are all perfectly legal practices, and the AR-15 fits in that niche, too.
Plus, it’s not used in crime that often, and when it is, there’s no evidence that the criminal who used it wouldn’t have just opted for another firearm had the evil “assault weapon” been unavailable.
Gottlieb is also correct in that there is no historical justification for the complete prohibition of a particular type of firearm. It just doesn’t exist, and while the anti-gun zealots will undoubtedly try to manipulate laws about things like Bowie knives to justify the bans, it just shouldn’t fly. They’re different and from a different era.
Viramontes is going to be one of the biggest decisions of our lifetime, whether the anti-gunners like it or not.
MOBILE, Ala. (NBC 15) — A homeowner shot and killed a man who police say broke a window and entered a home Monday night in west Mobile.
Mobile police said officers responded around 9:19 p.m. to the 8300 block of Calgary Drive, where they found a man inside the home suffering from a fatal gunshot wound.
Investigators said the homeowner shot the man after he unlawfully entered the house by breaking a window.
The man was identified as 37-year-old David Lee Jr.
Police said the case will be turned over to the Mobile County District Attorney’s Office for review
The Sunday after he decided to accept a federal plea offer, in which he agreed to plead guilty to one count of selling ammunition to a prohibited person, Pastor Russell Fincher submitted his resignation to the board of his small Oklahoma church, but the board refused to accept his resignation.
“You didn’t change,” he recalls one board member told him. “The government changed.”
Pastor Fincher has continued to preach the gospel to his small flock ever since.
“They kept me going,” Fincher said Tuesday. “God told me the whole time: ‘You trust me.’”
They handcuffed him and laid him out on his porch. Several agents yelled and screamed at him for more than an hour while others ripped apart his home. He offered to relinquish his Federal Firearm License, and an agent quickly had him sign three forms.
The ATF took more than 50 of his personal firearms, including a Colt Commander, five Glocks and a mint AK—a Polytech Pre-ban milled under-folder, which was worth thousands of dollars.
“You’re done. We have to shut you down,” Fincher recalls the lead ATF agent saying. “You tell all your FFL buddies we are coming for them. We are shutting the gun shows down.”
Months later, a federal grand jury issued a three-count indictment charging Fincher with two felonies and one misdemeanor:
Count one: Engaging in the business of dealing firearms without a license, a felony.
Count two: Selling ammunition to a prohibited person, a felony.
Count three: Making false entry in records by a federal firearms dealer, a misdemeanor.
Fincher’s Federal Public Defender negotiated the plea agreement, which kept Fincher out of federal prison. Both sides agreed that three years of probation would be “the appropriate disposition of the case.” The plea agreement also specified that Fincher would not contest the forfeiture of his personal firearms.
Last week, Fincher received a letter from his Teachers’ Retirement Fund, which scared him.
“They said they were kicking me out—I spent 10 years as a teacher—because I was a felon,” he said.
Things changed just a few days later when he received a call from the Federal Public Defender who had handled his criminal case.
“You’re not gonna believe this, but you just got a full presidential pardon,” Fincher said the attorney told him.
President Donald Trump gave Fincher and several others a “full and unconditional” pardon last week.
Now, with no criminal record, Fincher has been busy answering calls from friends, family and supporters.
He hopes he can return to teaching and coaching, in addition to his pastoral work. However, he has no plans to return to selling guns.
“There’s no way I am going to invite the federal government back into my world,” he said. “I am still so petrified of the federal government.”
He hopes he can retrieve his personal firearms from the ATF, and he wants to meet and personally thank President Trump. “I never thought I’d be here,” he said. “I never thought I’d get a pardon. I serve a mighty God, and as much as I love President Trump, God orchestrated this pardon.”
