Legal

This is another Rahimi in the making. In Rahimi, The People didn’t lose, but our win was limited. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion, leaving weasel words for the infringers to use against us.

The often quoted statement in the legal business is, “Bad facts make bad law.”

The Fact Pattern

From the indictment:

This is it. He was arrested and charged under 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3) because a search of his parents’ home found pot and a handgun in his possession.

The state explained the search this way:

It is important to note that promethazine is not a controlled substance. It is a prescription-only drug. IANAL, I have no idea how that relates to buying and selling controlled substances or things like cocaine.

It looks like his family were mild drug users. Cocaine and marijuana being their drugs of choice.

The statement “Hemani confessed that he had purchased the 4.7 grams of cocaine that was found…” may not be a fact in evidence. As far as I can tell, none of this statement has been determined to be factual, but, again, I am not a lawyer.

The state goes on to say that only “law-abiding” citizens are part of The People protected by the Second Amendment. This is a moronic take on Heller and Bruen. Rahimi had not been decided at the time of this filing. If Rahimi had been decided, the fact that Mr. Rahimi, a bad, bad man, was still considered to be part of The People protected by the Second Amendment would hold in this case.

Even though the state claims that Mr. Hemani is not a part of The People, they then say that the standard litany of “in the terror” and “while intoxicated” and other safety regulations are a match.

Here is the interesting thing: in the state’s entire section on meeting their burden of proving a match to this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, they did not cite a single firearm regulation. They didn’t cite a single regulation.

Instead they cited books of “expert” opinions. This does not count towards meeting their burden.

The Defense

Mr. Hemani filed a motion to dismiss the charges in an as-applied and facial challenge to §922(g)(3) as a violation of his Second Amendment protected rights. He also challenged under the Fifth Amendment on a vagueness claim.

The magistrate judge in the case heard the argument to dismiss and wrote a recommendation to the court.

The magistrate immediately finds that Mr. Hemani is part of The People. He is a U.S. Citizen who has resided in the U.S. his entire life.

This single finding shifts the burden to the state to prove that §922(g)(3) has a match in this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

The magistrate continues, finding that intoxication laws are not sufficiently analogous to 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3). He also rejects Reconstruction-era state laws as being too late in time.

It was interesting to me because these historical regulations were used in the Wolford case out of the Third Circuit. I used a less formal presentation to knock the same laws out of contention there as the magistrate does here.

In conclusion, the magistrate recommends that 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3) be found unconstitutional after Bruen.

Later the district trial court granted Mr. Hemani’s motion to dismiss on the ground that 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3) is unconstitutional as applied to Mr. Hemani.

Because the court found §922(g)(3) didn’t apply to Mr. Hemani, they dismissed his facial challenge as moot. In other words, Mr. Hemani won, but The People did not get a piece of that cake.

The state appealed.

The Fifth Circuit merits panel affirmed (agreed with) the district court.

In my opinion, this was an easy out. No inferior court really wants to say that any part of §922(g) is unconstitutional on its face. To do so would be to break so much of the gun control legislation in this country.

On Petition For Certiorari

Interestingly, the state didn’t immediately appeal to the Supreme Court. Instead they requested an extension while they considered the appeal.

In the end, the DOJ petitioned The Court for an answer to the question:

Most of the DOJ’s argument is a repeat of out-of-time-frame regulations, intentionally conflating “temporary” with “lifetime” prohibitions. As Mr. Hemani pointed out, being found guilty under §922(g)(3) means that you are now prohibited under §922(g)(1). Thus, (g)(3) is a lifetime prohibition.

The state then brings up §925(c). This is the method by which a person can get their Second Amendment protected rights back.

There are more than a few issues with this. Until very recently, and it still might be the case, the U.S. Congress had not allocated any funding towards implementing §925(c). You can request your rights back, but there is nobody to process your request. Therefore, no getting your rights back.

I believe that this might have been addressed in the current budget. If so, this allows this argument to stand. Actually, if I had read the next paragraph, the DOJ says just this, That program was effectively disabled from 1992 until 2025…

Unfortunately, to use §925(c), you have to admit to a violation of §922(g). That doesn’t sound like a wise thing. If the government decides you don’t get your rights back, you’ve admitted to a crime, for which you can be punished.

Certiorari

• Petitioner’s Brief on the Merits: Due December 4, 2025
• Amicus Curiae Briefs in Support of Petitioner or Neither Party: Due December 11, 2025
• Respondent’s Brief on the Merits: Due January 3, 2026
• Amicus Curiae Briefs in Support of Respondent: Due January 10, 2026
• Petitioner’s Reply Brief: Due February 2, 2026
• Oral Arguments: Expected in March 2026 (not yet scheduled)

This will be a big case.

IANAL Analysis

There are some serious problems with this case. Mrs. Hemani, the mother of Ali, is an active Muslim. A real little Satan, big Satan, martyr-loving barbarian. She was interviewed in Iran, telling the world that she wanted her sons to become martyrs. She made Facebook posts saying the same thing. All in all, she is a piece of garbage, exactly the sort of person I wish we could deport.

There does not seem to be any facts in evidence that Ali Hemani is a drug-dealing piece of garbage, but the district court detained him for the duration of his trial. He’s not a good person.

This Supreme Court is a law and order court. This administration is a law and order administration. This means that Mr. Hemani deserves to be imprisoned for being a despicable lowlife human.

This does not mean that it is constitutional to do so.

By stating the question as an “as-applied”, the DOJ is giving The Court an opportunity to find a way to throw Mr. Hemani in prison for up to 15 years while not messing up the progress we’ve made in Second Amendment jurisprudence.

We want Justice Thomas to write the opinion for Wolford v. Lopez. We don’t want Chief Justice Roberts writing another one of his easily twisted opinions here. Justice Alito would be a good choice.

Regardless, I expect a splitting of the baby. I expect we will hear more about “temporary” and “non-violent”, building on Rahimi.

I’m also hoping that we see another clear statement that “the plain text” is a simple test; the inferior courts got it right.

We might even see more on what time period is the correct time period for analogous regulations.

In short, I’m hopeful but not expecting this to be a total win for The People.

Wolford is in an interlocutory state. They are appealing a preliminary injunction.

The purpose of the trial court is to gather evidence, hear legal arguments, and then decide based on evidence and the legal standing.

What the Supreme Court has said is that Second Amendment challenges do not need evidence. They are legal decisions, decided by the courts.

The law says “x”. The challenger says the plain text of the Second Amendment covers the conduct regulated by the law. The burden shifts to the state to show that the current law is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.

There is no evidence to present. The court decides if the plain text covers the conduct. The court decides if the government has proven a history of firearms regulation that matches the current law. If the state fails to meet its burden, then the law is ruled unconstitional.

If the state wishes to bring in expert testimony regarding this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, that expert must be a lawyer. Not only must they be a lawyer, they must be part of the case.

Friends of the court can express their opinion, but the only place those opinions have any weight is if they are legal arguments regarding regulations from the time of the founding or somehow relevant to finding that the conduct is not covered by the Second Amendment.

At this point, everybody in Wolford has agreed the plain text of the Second Amendment is implicated. The state can present their arguments to the Supreme Court just as easily as to the trial court. There is no value the trial court will add to the analysis the Supreme Court will do.

Which leads us to, when will we hear back from the Supreme Court?

Cert was granted on October 3, 2025. Per rule 25 of the Supreme Court, the Petitioner (Plaintiff) must have their briefing in within 45 days. November 17, 2025. It is unlikely that this date will be pushed. Amici briefs supporting the Petitioner are due 7 days after.

The Respondent’s (defendant’s) brief is due 30 days after that, on December 17th. Again, Amici briefs the Respondent or neither are due 7 days after.

The Petitioner gets to reply to the Respondent’s brief. That is due 30 days after the respondent dockets their brief, putting us at January 10, 2026.

If everything goes as scheduled, oral arguments will be heard in February, with the opinion issuing in May.

I expect we will see at least one other Second Amendment case this term. If the Court is looking at Wolford to address sensitive places, then there will be no other sensitive places challenges heard.

That leaves a case dealing on what “arms” means. When that case is heard, they will address the proper usage of the “in common use for lawful purposes” shortcut to a Second Amendment win.

Winning the Battle

There are too many historical situations where a combatant won a battle, but it cost them the war. Little Big Horn comes to mind, though I don’t know enough to say if it is a true or good example.

The cost of winning might come with excessive loss of resources. A Pyrrhic victory.

The anti-gun people understand this. They are sometimes willing to lose a battle to maintain battlefield dominance. In N.Y.S.R. & P.A. v. New York City the city and state fought tooth and nail. They didn’t stop fighting. We lost in the district court. We lost in the Circuit Court. We appealed to the Supreme Court, and we were granted cert.

The anti-gunners looked at this and proceeded to remove the challenged regulations for New York City gun owners. The state of New York passed a law saying that New York City could never do it again. The state then told the Supreme Court the case was moot. The case was never heard. It died.

We “won” the battle; the anti-gunners won that war.

Rahimi

The anti-gun Biden administration saw a slate of cases moving towards the Supreme Court challenging §922(g)(8), Domestic Violence Restraining Order in Possession. The best case for us was the Range case. The worst for us was the Rahimi case.

Range was a case about a man who failed to claim income from his lawn care side hustle while he was receiving aid from the state. He was charged with defrauding the government. This was a felony. He pleaded guilty. He served no time. He was told to go forth and sin no more. And he kept his nose clean.

As a convicted felon, he is prohibited from possessing firearms. He went to court to get his rights back. His case would have been a wonderful opportunity to show that non-violent felons, under the 1968 GCA, cannot be prohibited from possessing firearms.

Rahimi, on the other hand, was a violent criminal. Witnesses saw him slam his girlfriend’s head into the car. He fired his gun at witnesses. He was arrested and was in prison for multiple felonies as well as being subject to a DVR while in possession.

After Bruen was decided, the Fifth Circuit court pulled the Rahimi case back after issuing their opinion. In their second opinion, they applied Bruen faithfully and declared §922(g)(8) unconstitutional.

Merrick Garland pushed Rahimi to the front of the line, and it was heard by the Supreme Court, which issued their opinion. Rahimi is a bad man. He needs to be in prison. He is precisely the sort of person that should not have access to arms.

This means that there are bad facts. Bad facts make for bad law. In this case we ended up with an opinion that was more easily twisted by inferior courts.

Garland v. Bondi

When Rahimi was requesting cert, the Garland-controlled DOJ pushed the Supreme Court to take the case. When the DOJ asks the Court to take a case, they are more likely to take the case requested by the DOJ than other similar cases. We did not want this to happen. Yes, we wanted the Court to hear a 2A case. This was not the one we wanted in front of the Supreme Court.

We are now looking at Rush v. USA. This is another case with bad facts. Mr. Rush is not a good man. He was doing bad things, and FO was applied to him.

He had his license revoked. He drove to his court hearing. He drove away after the court hearing. The cops stopped him to ask what he was doing driving on a revoked license. During the stop they smelled and observed pot. He was arrested. While searching his car, they found an SBR.

We don’t need to go into what he had done to be in court in the first place; needless to say, not a good fact pattern.

We do not want Rush in front of the Supreme Court. In the best of worlds, we are only going to get a lackluster result. In addition, there are other vehicles in the works attacking SBR, Silencers, and SBS remaining inside the NFA.

Damning With Faint Praise

My father explained this to me in terms of how a superior officer might praise a lower ranking member with faint praise. He said nothing that can be challenged, but everybody reading the report will know what is not said.

A pitcher might be praised for how far he can spit his tobacco juice. This likely implies he’s not a good pitcher.

The DOJ must make a good faith effort to explain why cert should be denied. It has to be grounded in legal reasoning. And they do that.

Their motion is darn weak. They rely on regulations from the 19th century. The whitewash Miller‘s findings. In short, it half hearted. But they use it as a method to say:

This is on point. It is a statement that the DOJ wants the Supreme Court to hear a 2A case, just not this one.

Final Note

As we have discussed, a circuit split is useful for getting the Supreme Court to grant cert. Getting a circuit split on anti-gun laws is very difficult because anti-gun states passing infringements exist within anti-gun inferior courts. The Ninth Circuit is many to zero in favor of California infringements.

The Seventh is nearly as bad. So are the Second, Fourth, Third, and First circuits. Well, sort of.

The Third Circuit, as of Friday, was 7-6 Republican appointees. In an upcoming en banc hearing, they will be 8-6. The problem is that if one of those Republican appointed judges flips to the side of infringement, we will lose in the Third Circuit, again.

On Friday, the Senate confirmed Professor Jennifer Lee Mascott to the Third Circuit. If President Trump signs the confirmation, and she is sworn in by a Supreme Court Justice by the morning of the 15th, she will sit and hear Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs v. Platkin (consolidated with Firearms Policy Coalition v. Platkin, Docket Nos. 24-2002 and 24-2003).

With Judge Mascott on the Third Circuit for this hearing, there will be a 10-6 balance. Even if we were to lose one judge to the dark side, we still win the case.

If we win in the Third Circuit, we will have the circuit split on “Assault Weapons” bans.

Conclusion

All is not as it seems on the surface. You have to look beyond what we are seeing and look to the future. Pam Bondi and Trump are good for the Second Amendment. If it looks like they are not, wait a minute. Take a deep breath and figure out what else is going on.

Yeah, it really was the judge being a clown. The state did not ask for membership lists.

On Friday the parties, the state, and the plaintiffs filed a joint motion to amend the final judgement.

History

Back in November of 2020, Caleb Reese, Joseph Granich, FPC, The Second Amendment Foundation, and the Louisiana Shooting Association filed suit in the Western District of Louisiana challenging 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(b)(1) and 922(c)(1), 27 C.F.R. §§ 478.99(b)(1), 478.124(a), and 478.96(b).

U.S.C. is United States Code, or laws. C.F.R. is Code of Federal Regulations. So they are challenging the rules and regulations infringing on The People aged 18, 19, and 20 from purchasing firearms from FFLs.

The named plaintiffs, Reese and Granich, were in that age range when the suit was filed. Since it was filed in 2020, there is no way that they are still in that age range today. The case is moot.

This is why the organizations are required to be in the suit. They need real people to start the suit, but the organizations can add other members that meet the requirement of being in the age group as the original plaintiffs age out.

On May 5th, 2021, the plaintiffs did just that; they added Emily Naquin to the suit. This gave them a longer window and added a woman to the complaint.

On June 10, 2021, Joseph Granich left the suit.

In July of 2022, the court was formally made aware of Bruen. This means that the district court must use the Heller methodology as affirmed in Bruen. Is the plain text of the Second Amendment implicated? Is there an analogous regulation in this Nation’s history of firearm regulation?

The state immediately responded that Bruen affirms the Second Amendment allows a ‘variety’ of gun regulations, including ‘laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms’. In other words, the state ignored the holding and dicta of The Court and instead cherry-picked a phrase from a concurrence. I love how they say, “Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence emphasizes….” They added the word emphasizes to imply what is not there.

On December 21, 2022, the district court found that the Second Amendment was implicated. Further, it found that Congress had designated 18, 19, and 20-year-olds as particularly dangerous, and therefore they could be disarmed in keeping with this Nation’s history of firearms regulation. Never mind that this implies that Congress can disarm any group by declaring them “dangerous.”

The case was appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which issued its opinion January 30 and issued its mandate on April 17, 2025.

The Fifth Circuit Court’s Judgment

The Fifth Circuit dealt with the state’s contention that the law didn’t even implicate the Second Amendment like this:

Note that the state doesn’t even believe that newly enlisted members of our military are part of The People.

The court then went on to discuss what plain text means. The threshold textual question is not whether the laws and regulations impose reasonable or historically grounded limitations, but whether the Second Amendment “covers” the conduct (commercial purchases) to begin with. — Id.. Clearly this is the correct methodology.

Step one isn’t really a step; it is a simple question. If it takes more than a sentence, then they are likely doing it wrong.

Or, put another way, why not assume it is covered under the plain text? The courts used to do this, until they couldn’t wave a magic wand and say the state’s argument is more important than The People’s rights.

This is a good example of “tradition.” We can look at this Nation’s history of firearm regulation and find outliers. These outliers do not outweigh the consistent approach, the traditions of all states.

In the end, the Fifth Circuit concludes:

Three of the potential outcomes from an appeal are “AFFIRM,” which says the superior court agrees with the inferior court. “VACATE,” which says that the inferior court got it wrong and needs to do it over, considering the named opinions. But the strongest of them all is to “REVERSE.” To reverse an inferior court’s decision is to say not only did they get it wrong, but that the superior court doesn’t believe the inferior court will get it right.

Or in some cases, there is no need for the inferior court to put their oar in the water. What’s done is done.

The District Court Beclowns Themselves

The circuit court’s holding is that 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(b)(1), (c)(1) and the regulations that build on them are unconstitutional. There is no wiggle room in that opinion. It is a pure win for The People.

There is nothing in that opinion that suggests that this is an as-applied or is any other way limited to just the plaintiffs.

In Rahimi we had an “as applied” finding. This is being played out in other §922(g)(8) situations. They are coming down in “as applied” opinions.

Once the district court receives its marching orders, it is supposed to follow orders like the inferior it is. There is a clear winner and a clear loser.

The court then orders the parties, both the winners and the losers, to submit a proposed judgment. The court is supposed to look at the proposed judgment, make sure it aligns with the superior court’s orders, and then sign off.

Generally, the parties work out an agreement, which is then presented to the court.

The plaintiffs, the good guys and winners, suggested the following:

With the court ordering the state to stop enforcing the rules and regulations. This judgment would stop the exercise of the relevant rules and regulations in the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit. A giant win. And it could be used in support of other cases.

The state, the defendants, the bad guys, and the losers proposed the following:

Here the state changes this from a facial win to an as-applied. Which is even worse than it originally sounds. This judgment would only last for 3 years. At the end of three years, everybody that would be covered by this judgment would have aged out of the category.

The state argues that Trump v. CASA applies. The state claims that the judgment of the court would be a universal injunction, which would be too wide. But that was never the case. This ruling would only apply within the Fifth Circuit. So the state is full of excrement.

They go on to say that it should only apply to members of the organizations that were members when the case was filed. This would limit the relief to people that joined FPC or SAF when they were children; otherwise, they would have already aged out.

The state is also requiring that the organizational plaintiffs provide membership lists because: limiting the scope of permanent relief to members of the organizational plaintiffs who were members when suit was filed is necessary because only such persons have standing to sue, and because equity requires this limitation to avoid incentivizing free riders.

The judge’s final order includes FFLs that were members of the organizations when the suit was filed in 2020.

The only people who would benefit from this order are the two named plaintiffs.

Conclusion

The judge is a freaking clown. He got his knuckles rapped by his superior and has decided to thumb his bright red nose at them.

History

In April of 2025, Wolford et al. petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari.

This followed the Ninth Circuit’s decision that a vampire law was constitutional. A vampire law is one in which you are not allowed to bring your firearm onto private property without express consent from the owner or the owner’s agent.

The good news is that the Second Circuit Court, in a rare moment of integrity to the Constitution, found the same law in New York State to be unconstitutional.

This created a circuit split. That plus this being a new attack vector on the people’s right to keep and bear arms made it an interesting case.

It was not as interesting, in my opinion, as the sensitive places and other cases pending before the court that were denied cert.

Cert Is Granted

On October 3rd, just days before the start of the new term, the Supreme Court of the United States took a Second Amendment case.

My mind is blown. I wasn’t even looking for anything in this case.

Pam Bondi’s DOJ had filed an amicus brief in favor of The People back in May.

Conclusion

We will have a briefing schedule shortly. Once that is available, I’ll do a deep dive into this case. This case has the makings of another Bruen.

While the question isn’t that big, the dicta surrounding the finding is likely to be a slap in the face to the inferior courts.

This will be one of the first cases the Supreme Court hears after the absolutely vicious statements given by the justices regarding the behavior of the inferior court’s attacks on the Trump administration.

I would love to own a machine gun. It would cost me $75 and ten minutes at the milling machine. Locate the selector switch hole, move to the deck a specific amount, and drill a hole. Flip over the receiver and repeat. Then install the parts.

Total time would be around an hour because I would be going slow. The longest time would likely be finding the reamer of the correct size.

Today it would cost me over $10k to buy a machine gun. Because I’m not allowed to manufacture a machine gun, not because of any law directly forbidding it, but because the Hughes amendment in 1986 closed the NFA registration to new machineguns.

That took the cost of an M16 from slightly more than the cost of an AR-15 to astronomical amounts today.

There are other machine guns I would love to make; I’d love to make an M3 grease gun for the Blue-Haired Faire.

But that is not the state of case law today.

The simple answer is that I should be able to go to court and say, “I want to manufacture a machine gun for my personal use. I would do so but for 18 U.S.C. §922. This is in violation of my Second Amendment protected rights.”

The next step that should happen is that the court does a lexical analysis. Are machine guns arms? The answer is obviously “Yes.”

Subsequently, the state must prove that machine guns are both unusually dangerous and uncommon. The Supreme Court has set the upper limit on “common” at 200,000. If there are more than 200,000 machine guns owned for lawful purposes, then machine guns are in common use.

Because the Supreme Court did the analysis in Heller, the common use test is all that must be done. Any other language in Heller, Bruen, or any other Supreme Court finding is outside the holdings of those two cases. That is still good case law.

This is not happening currently. The courts are tying themselves in pretzels to say that machine guns are not arms. Or that “in common use for lawful purposes” actually means “in lawful use for self-defense,” where “self-defense” is defined as pulling the trigger.

Regardless, the fact remains that machine guns are arms, they are protected by the Second Amendment, and they are in common use for lawful purposes. If the number in common use isn’t at the 200k mark, the case can be made that they would be in common use if the law didn’t prohibit making new ones for The People.

This means that there are cases being argued along these exact lines. And the district and circuit courts are doing the shuffle and twist to find machine gun bans constitutional.

The question becomes, do we want a machine gun case to reach the Supreme Court?

I point you to Rahimi. This was a case with a terrible fact pattern. Rahimi was an asshole wife/spouse/girlfriend beater who had no problems shooting at people, brandishing his firearms, and being a criminal thug. If his conviction for having a firearm while being a prohibited person had been overturned at the Supreme Court, he would still have been in prison. The firearms charge was just a topper on all the other charges he was convicted of.

Rahimi was good case law for us. The holding was fairly simple: if you are adjudicated a violent person, you can have your Second Amendment protected rights temporarily abridged. While the inferior courts continue to misuse this case, that was the holding.

If it had been Range that made it to the Supreme Court, we would have had a much more favorable fact pattern. He failed to report extra income he was earning doing odd jobs. He pleaded guilty to the charge. He served no time. The maximum amount of time he could have been sentenced to was exceeding a year.

Under the GCA of 1968, this makes him a “felon” and a prohibited person. There is no evidence he is a violent person. Since his conviction, there have been no other incidents to paint him in a bad light.

Garland did us dirty with Rahimi. He knew the fact pattern was horrible; he used that to get a holding that wasn’t as strong as it might have been in the Range case.

When you or I think of machine guns, we are likely thinking about M16s or an MP-5, or any of those cool things. Most machine gun cases in criminal court are about “Glock Switches.” These cases almost always have bad fact patterns. We don’t want these cases in front of the Supreme Court.

Which leads us to my example case: I file a civil lawsuit with the backing of the gun rights group. It will take a while to make it up the courts: 6 months in the district court another 8 to 12 months before the circuit court opines. Then a year or so waiting for cert., oral arguments, and then the opinion from the Supreme Court.

Just a few million dollars to exercise my God given rights.

What is the likely outcome before the Supreme Court?

I believe that Thomas and Alito would find for The People. Given what Kavanaugh said in Heller II, I expect that he would find for The People as well. Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan would find a reason to support gun control. That leaves three justices.

Roberts isn’t to be trusted on this sort of case. That leaves Barrett and Gorsuch. I don’t know where they will fall in that case. I’ve been impressed with Gorsuch and Barrett, but there is too much at stake right now.

What I want to see is a couple of Second Amendment cases make it through this court, with maybe an additional Trump-appointed justice. I would like to see where Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch line up before I risk a machine gun case in front of them.

Suppressors, SBRs, and SBS are all ripe for the Supreme Court to take on. Those are tax issues. With a zero tax, there is no justification for the registration process. This means they become firearms regulated under the GCA of 1968, not the NFA of 1934.

Sensitive places is another good subject for the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh thinks we will be seeing a magazine and semi-auto rifle ban before the Supreme Court shortly.

I don’t know about those. I think that the Supreme Court is more likely to take a different subject for direct reasons and then clarify what “plain text” means with explicit language. I’d love to see part of the dict that reads, “Just as AR-15s are arms under the plain text of the Second Amendment, …” because that is a hammer to be used in the inferior courts.

This case is being set up for a bases loaded home run.

Consider the Second Amendment legal landscape of 4 years ago. Heller had set the standard. Is the plain text of the Second Amendment implicated? If so, what is this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation?

This was a joyful time. I remember that D.C. became a constitutional carry location for about 5 minutes before they changed the rules.

The problem we had was that there was a footnote in the Heller opinion that the anti-gunners used to pry open the path to gun control.

California was one of the first states to drive through that gap. Chicago, Maryland, New Jersey, and others quickly followed.

These Heller response laws were challenged. The cases made their way up to the circuit courts, where we learned the wonderful world of interest balancing.

Under interest balancing, the courts would first ask the purpose of the law or regulation. If the proposed purpose was deemed to be “important” enough, then a lower standard of scrutiny would be applied. If the proposed purpose wasn’t important enough, then higher levels of scrutiny would be applied.

What this meant was that the courts looked like they were treating the plaintiffs with respect while putting four or five thumbs on the scales of justice.

The 9th, 7th, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th circuit courts all took up the cry of “interest balancing.” The other circuits weren’t ruling on Second Amendment cases, so it didn’t really matter.

All the circuits that took up Second Amendment challenges all decided in the same way. Against The People.

Bruen put an end to levels of scrutiny. The inferior courts are still playing games. The current game playing focuses on “Is it an arm?” and “Can you prove it is in common use for self-defense?” Their goal is to keep Bruen from being applied.

But we have a problem. All the circuit courts that are ruling on Second Amendment cases are ruling the same way. Against The People. They are still the same rogue, inferior courts, thumbing their noses at the Supreme Court.

But something has changed out there in New Jersey and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Trump and other originalist jurists have become a majority in the Third Circuit.

If we can get just one more confirmation, and there is a nominee going through the process right now, it will be an even larger majority.

The People got a shitty draw of judges for the merits panel. Not that surprising. We expected another loss. Judges Shwartz, Freeman, and Smith heard oral arguments on July 1st 4-2450-24-2506_Association of NJ Rifle Pistol Clubs v. Attorney General N. Jetal.

Here is where it gets interesting: on the same day that the case was argued, the court ordered the parties to produce a transcript. Which was entered into the record on July 15th.

Why did they need a written record? Likely because they expected other courts or panels were going to want to read it.

Under the Third Circuit’s internal operating procedures, a merits panel must circulate their opinion(s) before they are published. This gives the rest of the judges on the court an opportunity to comment and provide suggestions.

But something else can happen: if a majority of the active judges are in disagreement with the proposed opinion, they can grant an en banc hearing sua sponte. (Without a request from either party). And this is what happened on August 21st.

We are pretty sure that the opinion by this three-judge merits panel was going to go against us. If the majority of the active judges agreed with that opinion, there is no reason to call for an en banc hearing.

En banc hearings in the Third Circuit are a pain. It is all the judges dealing with the one case. It isn’t common.

In Snope we saw the Fourth Circuit do the same thing; gut in that case, we were expecting a positive opinion.

Oral arguments will be held on October 15th at 0930.

The only wrinkle is that Judge Smith is no longer an active judge, but he has elected to participate as a member of the en banc panel. Smith is currently a senior judge, meaning he only hears cases of interest to him.

If the Third Circuit finds for The People and the Constitution, this will create a major circuit split. This makes the case ripe for the Supreme Court. Matching it with Kavanaugh’s dissent in refusing cert on Snope.

Representatives are allocated by population. The higher the state’s population, the more representatives they have.

The total number of representatives has been fixed for a while. This means that if one state gets more representatives, some other state gets fewer.

Not only do representatives determine the make up of the House, they also determine the make up of the electorial collage.

Thus, the number of representatives a state has is critical in determining political outcomes.

One of the issues currently being debated is a new census before the 2028 election. There are indications that some states, such as California, are overrepresented because the census counted criminal illegal aliens. Look into the 3/5s clause in the Constitution for why this is an issue.

After every census, the states can redistrict based on the new census numbers.

In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This act sets new rules for how the representatives should be chosen by the many states.

Unfortunately, this act is likely at odds with the Constitution. In particular the Fourteenth Amendment. Any law that Congress passes that is contrary to the Constitution is void. Unfortunately, it takes a case reaching the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court agreeing the law is contrary to the Constitution for the law to be struck down.

Of course, this hasn’t stopped rogue, agenda-driven, inferior court judges from pretending that Congress can pass laws restricting the powers of the Article II executive.

The question then becomes, “How do you create districts for a state that are representative of the people of the state?”

Generally the districts of a state are created to control the outcome of elections.

Here is part of the 2011 congressional districts of Maryland:

If you look at Congressional District 01 in orange, you can see that it has many counties within it. But more importantly, it extends into Baltimore County. The same with District 02. Most of the military of the Aberdeen Proving Grounds and Edgewood Area are in District 02. But I also include a part of Baltimore City and Howard County.

I’m sure you would not be surprised to learn that the very high concentration of PoC voting Democrat causes Districts 01 and 02 to be Democrat districts.

The current congressional districts follow the county borders.

The way this worked was that everybody knows that Baltimore is a huge Democrat stronghold. It is so huge that they can dilute it with Republicans and still come out for the Democrats.

By using the Democrat voters of Baltimore in districts 1, 2, 3, and 7 they made 4 of the 8 districts +Democrat. District 4 is using the Democrat voters of Montgomery County to overwhelm the Republican voters of the rest of the district. Districts 5, 6, and 8 are Democrat strongholds; they don’t need any help from the city.

This districting leaves Republicans of Maryland without representation in Congress.

In Louisiana v. Callais the Supreme Court is hearing a case challenging the VRA on Constitutional grounds.

In Robinson v. Ardoin in 2023, a district court found that Louisiana had violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The inferior court ordered the state to create an additional majority-black district to avoid “vote dilution.”

This court order resulted in Louisiana’s SB8. The sponsor of SB8 said “We all know why we’re here. We were ordered to draw a new Black district, and that’s what I’ve done”.

That new district stretches 250 miles from the Shreveport in the northwest to Baton Rouge in southeast Lousiiana.

All to create another black district. When we say black district, what is really meant is “Democrat district.”

Well the Supreme Court got the case and decided to punt. Thomas was unhappy with that and told the world how unhappy he was.

This case was argued on March 24th in the 2024 term. Instead of issuing an opinion before the end of the term, the Court instead put the case back on the calendar for reargument.

It appears that the Court wants to be briefed on specific aspects of the case.

Conclusion

This case is outside my knowledge base. In trying to understand the question presented, I’m lost. And that is just one page. Thank goodness Thomas writes in English that I can understand.

This is just another case clawing back the rights of The People after years of reverse descrimination.

On June 27, 2025, the Supreme Court issued their opinion in Trump v. CASA which found that the courts do not have the authority to grant universal injunctions.

This put the left in a tailspin. If they can’t get universal injunctions, they can’t stop the Trump Administration in the courts. The current battle plan of the deep state, leftist *bleep*, is to delay, delay, delay.

During Trump’s first term, they neutered him by cutting him off from his trusted associates and then throwing up roadblocks at every occasion. The goal was to delay his actions until he was removed from office.

This time around, they are using the courts because Trump v2.0 is better, faster, and better equipped to deal with their games. He issues executive orders that explicitly state that he wants the law to be followed. He doesn’t zero a budget; he reduces it to the required minimum. He doesn’t close an agency; he just folds all their duties into other agencies and guts the workforce.

The Supreme Court left open an avenue for nationwide injunctions to take place. That path is a “class action.”

This requires a class certification. The court must determine if a group of individuals has similar claims that can be grouped together.

The investigation and filing process normally takes a few months to a year to complete. My understanding is that the average is closer to 12 months than 2 months.

After the investigation, the request for class certification is filed, and the court decides. This takes from 6 months to 2 years.

Our timeline, June 27, 2025, no more universal injunctions. On June 27th, the court orders the parties to file how Trump v CASA impacts this case by July 2nd. On July 2nd, the plaintiffs (bad guys) said that this is really a class action suit. On July 25, the court says that they are treating this as a certified class and grants an injunction.

We are about 10 days from reading another SCOTUS opinion and order telling this court to knock it the F___ off.

Note, the Washington Post is reporting this as a TRO. It is not. It is a preliminary injunction which can be appealed.

Maybe we’ll see the Second Circuit Court do the right thing. I doubt it, but the D.C. Circuit Court did.