Category: Gun Fearing Wussies
Several major credit card companies have decided to move forward with a plan to track purchases made at gun retailers in California, CBS News reported Monday.
American Express, Visa, and Mastercard will implement a new merchant code for firearm and ammunition retailers, allowing banks to track “suspicious” purchases to comply with a new California law. Adopting the code will not provide information about the specific items purchased at the retailer, as credit card companies do not record data at an SKU level.
Retailers are assigned merchant category codes based on the types of items they sell. According to Mastercard’s quick reference booklet, gun stores are currently assigned the “miscellaneous” or “durable goods” merchant category code. Other businesses listed under those codes include gas lighting fixtures, musical instruments, fireworks, fire extinguishers, grave markers, luggage, and wood chips.
In 2022, the International Organization for Standardization approved a unique code for firearm retailers. California then passed a law requiring retailers to adopt the ISO’s new code by May 2025.
The three major credit card companies previously agreed to assign the new code to gun retailers to allow banks to track firearm purchases more easily. In September 2022, 24 Republican state attorneys general wrote a letter to the companies, urging them to reconsider, Blaze News previously reported. According to the AGs, implementing a unique code could violate citizens’ rights.
“Categorizing the constitutionally protected right to purchase firearms unfairly singles out law-abiding merchants and consumers alike,” the letter argued.
Supporters of the law believe that the implementation of a unique code could prevent mass shooting incidents. Conservatives argue that the move will infringe on Second Amendment rights and potentially cause banks to flag and report so-called suspicious purchase patterns that target law-abiding Americans.
In March 2023, the companies agreed to halt their plans to implement the new code, citing pressure from Republican politicians, Blaze News previously reported.
On Monday, CBS News stated that American Express, Visa, and Mastercard have since reversed course and once again plan to adopt the new code to comply with California’s law.
The news outlet reported that the credit card companies told congressional Democrats last month that the new code would be available and ready for use in California by May 2025.
Mastercard executive Tucker Foote wrote to lawmakers, “The applicable standalone merchants in California primarily engaged in the sale of firearms will be required to utilize the code.”
Visa senior vice president Robert B. Thomson III’s comments to lawmakers seemed to indicate that the company will continue to pause the adoption of the code at least until California’s new law goes into effect in 2025. CBS News reported that Thomson assured Democrats that Visa would endeavor to comply with the state’s rule.
Thomson wrote, “With respect to the [firearm merchant code], there continues to be a tremendous amount of regulatory and legislative uncertainty.”
“Given the conflicting state laws on this topic and the likelihood that other states will enact legislation to either restrict or mandate the code, our implementation pause remains in effect,” Thomson added.
Indiana State Rep. Jim Lucas (R-Seymour) flashes his handgun at anti-gun violence advocates in the state Capitol.
LUCAS: "There are little kids out there … Kids that are 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds that compete with handguns,"
ACTIVIST: "Nothing about that makes me feel safe." pic.twitter.com/dpoEiXvB2T
— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) January 31, 2024
The Second Amendment Foundation and a District Attorney in Pennsylvania have filed a federal lawsuit against Attorney General Merrick Garland, the heads of the FBI and ATF, and the U.S. Government, challenging the federal prohibition on gun ownership by medical marijuana users.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. In addition to Garland, the lawsuit names FBI Director Christopher Wray and ATF Director Steven Dettelbach as defendants. SAF is joined by Warren County, Pa. District Attorney Robert Greene, who has served in that office since 2013 and currently possesses a medical marijuana ID card under Pennsylvania law. They are represented by attorneys Adam Kraut, who serves as SAF executive director, and Joshua Prince of Bechtelsville, Pa.
The lawsuit challenges restrictions contained in 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(3), (d)(3), which prohibit firearms purchases and possession by persons who use marijuana or other controlled substances.
“Medicinal marijuana has been adopted by 38 states despite federal inaction on the issue,” said Kraut, who is also a practicing attorney in Pennsylvania. “With the increasing acceptance of medical cannabis, millions of Americans are forced to choose between the exercise of their Second Amendment rights or treating their symptoms with a substance that disenfranchises them from their constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms.
Such a choice is incompatible with the constitution and finds no basis in this country’s history and tradition. We look forward to vindicating the rights of medical marijuana users.”
“The use of medical marijuana should not translate to an automatic surrender of one’s Second Amendment rights,” added SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The current restrictions unquestionably and arbitrarily infringe on the right to keep and bear arms, and the restriction lacks any director or analogous historical support, as required by the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen ruling.”
Second Amendment Foundation
The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 720,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
Research suggests it’s largely because they’re anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market and beset by racial fears
Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. has tripled, while imports have doubled. This doesn’t mean more households have guns than ever before—that percentage has stayed fairly steady for decades. Rather, more guns are being stockpiled by a small number of individuals. Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, says a recent, definitive study from the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University.
So, who is buying all these guns—and why?
The short, broad-brush answer to the first part of that question is this: men, who on average possess almost twice the number of guns female owners do. But not all men. Some groups of men are much more avid gun consumers than others. The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male—but not just any white guy. According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.
These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives. Taken together, these studies describe a population that is struggling to find a new story—one in which they are once again the heroes.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HARD WORK?
When Northland College sociologist Angela Stroud studied applications for licenses to carry concealed firearms in Texas, which exploded after President Obama was elected, she found applicants were overwhelmingly dominated by white men. In interviews, they told her that they wanted to protect themselves and the people they love.
“When men became fathers or got married, they started to feel very vulnerable, like they couldn’t protect families,” she says. “For them, owning a weapon is part of what it means to be a good husband and a good father.” That meaning is “rooted in fear and vulnerability—very motivating emotions.”
But Stroud also discovered another motivation: racial anxiety. “A lot of people talked about how important Obama was to get a concealed-carry license: ‘He’s for free health care, he’s for welfare.’ They were asking, ‘Whatever happened to hard work?’” Obama’s presidency, they feared, would empower minorities to threaten their property and families.
The insight Stroud gained from her interviews is backed up by many, many studies. A 2013 paper by a team of United Kingdom researchers found that a one-point jump in the scale they used to measure racism increased the odds of owning a gun by 50 percent. A 2016 study from the University of Illinois at Chicago found that racial resentment among whites fueled opposition to gun control. This drives political affiliations: A 2017 study in the Social Studies Quarterly found that gun owners had become 50 percent more likely to vote Republican since 1972—and that gun culture had become strongly associated with explicit racism.
For many conservative men, the gun feels like a force for order in a chaotic world, suggests a study published in December of last year. In a series of three experiments, Steven Shepherd and Aaron C. Kay asked hundreds of liberals and conservatives to imagine holding a handgun—and found that conservatives felt less risk and greater personal control than liberal counterparts.
This wasn’t about familiarity with real-world guns—gun ownership and experience did not affect results. Instead, conservative attachment to guns was based entirely on ideology and emotions.
WHO WANTS TO BE A HERO?
That’s an insight echoed by another study published last year. Baylor University sociologists Paul Froese and F. Carson Mencken created a “gun empowerment scale” designed to measure how a nationally representative sample of almost 600 owners felt about their weapons. Their study found that people at the highest level of their scale—the ones who felt most emotionally and morally attached to their guns—were 78 percent white and 65 percent male.
“We found that white men who have experienced economic setbacks or worry about their economic futures are the group of owners most attached to their guns,” says Froese. “Those with high attachment felt that having a gun made them a better and more respected member of their communities.”
That wasn’t true for women and non-whites. In other words, they may have suffered setbacks—but women and people of color weren’t turning to guns to make themselves feel better. “This suggests that these owners have other sources of meaning and coping when facing hard times,” notes Froese—often, religion. Indeed, Froese and Mencken found that religious faith seemed to put the brakes on white men’s attachment to guns.
For these economically insecure, irreligious white men, “the gun is a ubiquitous symbol of power and independence, two things white males are worried about,” says Froese. “Guns, therefore, provide a way to regain their masculinity, which they perceive has been eroded by increasing economic impotency.”
Both Froese and Stroud found pervasive anti-government sentiments among their study participants. “This is interesting because these men tend to see themselves as devoted patriots, but make a distinction between the federal government and the ‘nation,’ says Froese. “On that point, I expect that many in this group see the ‘nation’ as being white.”
Investing guns with this kind of moral and emotional meaning has many consequences, the researchers say. “Put simply, owners who are more attached to their guns are most likely to believe that guns are a solution to our social ills,” says Froese. “For them, more ‘good’ people with guns would drastically reduce violence and increase civility. Again, it reflects a hero narrative, which many white men long to feel a part of.”
Stroud’s work echoes this conclusion. “They tell themselves all kinds of stories about criminals and criminal victimization,” she says. “But the story isn’t just about criminals. It’s about the good guy—and that’s how they see themselves: ‘I work hard, I take care of my family, and there are people who aren’t like that.’ When we tell stories about the Other, we’re really telling stories about ourselves.”
HOW TO SAVE A WHITE MAN’S LIFE
Unfortunately, the people most likely to be killed by the guns of white men aren’t the “bad guys,” presumably criminals or terrorists. It’s themselves—and their families.
White men aren’t just the Americans most likely to own guns; according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they’re also the people most likely to put them in their own mouths and pull the trigger, especially when they’re in some kind of economic distress. A white man is three times more likely to shoot himself than a black man—while the chances that a white man will be killed by a black man are extremely slight. Most murders and shoot-outs don’t happen between strangers. They unfold within social networks, among people of the same race.
A gun in the home is far more likely to kill or wound the people who live there than is a burglar or serial killer. Most of the time, according to every single study that’s ever been done about interpersonal gun violence, the dead and wounded know the people who shot them. A gun in the home makes it five times more likely that a woman will be killed by her husband. Every week in America, 136 children and teenagers are shot—and more often than not, it’s a sibling, friend, parent, or relative who holds the gun. For every homicide deemed justified by the police, guns are used in 78 suicides. As a new study published this month in JAMA Internal Medicine once again shows us, restrictive gun laws don’t prevent white men from defending themselves and their families. Instead, those laws stop them from shooting themselves and each other.
What are the solutions? That and many other studies suggest that restricting the flow of guns and ammunition would certainly save lives. But no law can address the absence of meaning and purpose that many white men appear to feel, which they might be able to gain through social connection to people who never expected to have the economic security and social power that white men once enjoyed.
“Ridicule of working-class white people is not helpful,” says Angela Stroud. “We need to push the ‘good guys’ to have a deeper connection to other people. We need to reimagine who we are in relation to each other.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
A recent report by the Center for Gun Violence Solutions, which is part of Johns Hopkins (Michael) Bloomberg School of Public Health, conflates private gun ownership with armed insurrection in order to advocate for expanded gun control.
The 32-page study, which is titled “Defending Democracy: Addressing the Danger of Armed Insurrection,” not only revisits and revises the Jan. 6th protest – even though no protesters were armed and the only casualty was 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by Capitol Police – it resurrects actual armed insurrections from American history, such as Shays’ Rebellion of 1786, the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 and the American Civil War.
The three authors, who are all attorneys with a history of paid anti-gun activism, clumsily raise the insurrection boogeyman to push for additional regulations for carrying firearms, tactical training prohibitions, additional gun-free zones, expanded Red Flag laws, and the repeal of state preemption statutes, which has long been a major goal of the gun ban industry. Preemption laws prevent local jurisdictions from enacting their own gun-control regulations, which would result in a patchwork of gun-free zones.
Their authors’ warped message is to be expected, especially when you consider the biased nature of their backgrounds, their sponsors, their sources, and Michael Bloomberg’s school itself. (If you type “gun violence” into the school’s internal search engine, it will yield more than 1,000 results.)
The Center for Gun Violence Solutions admits it uses a “public health approach” to identify gun-control solutions, even though a gun is an inanimate object, not a disease, ailment or disorder. The school further claims it uses “rigorous scientific research to identify a range of innovative solutions to gun violence.” However, the authors’ rigorous scientific research turned out to be nothing more than false claims gleaned from biased stories from the legacy media and other anti-gun organizations that masquerade as actual news websites.
The authors used stories from CNN, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, PBS, NPR, VOX, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Washington Post, USA Today, the Associated Press, PolitiFact, Politico, Slate and the Southern Poverty Law Center. They even used stories from two dedicated anti-gun groups, Giffords and The Trace – the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control empire.
Biased authors
The report was written by Tim Carey, Kelly Roskam, and Joshua Horwitz. Carey is the law and policy advisor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. According to his bio, he is responsible for “Drafting legislation, regulations, legal reports, legislative testimony, fact sheets, and other advocacy materials.” Before moving to Johns Hopkins, Carey was the law and policy staff attorney for the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.
Roskam is the director of law and policy at Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, she was the general counsel and legal director for the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. Roskam’s bio also states she interned at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Horwitz is the co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. Before joining Johns Hopkins, he too worked at the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, serving as executive director.
Biased report
The authors claim their report is both an examination and a warning about the threat that “armed insurrectionism poses to democracy in the United States.”
“The growing presence of firearms in political spaces in the United States endangers public health, safety, and the functioning of democracy,” the report states. “Far from being an outlier, the January 6th insurrection at the United States Capitol was part of a long line of events in which individuals have sought to use political losses to justify violence or threats of violence to disrupt our government and limit civic engagement.”
As stated, the policy recommendations presented by the authors are merely longstanding goals of the gun-ban industry, which would help propel them toward their ultimate goal of total civilian disarmament. The only difference is that now their policy recommendations are presented as necessary to “address the dangers of armed insurrectionism.”
Biased sponsors
“We would like to thank the Joyce Foundation and the Morningstar Foundation for supplying core support for this report,” the authors wrote.
The Joyce Foundation is firmly committed to gun control. According to their website, the Joyce Foundation seeks to:
- Advance and implement federal, state, and local policies and practices that reduce easy accessibility of guns to those at risk of violence
- Support policies to reduce easy accessibility of guns to those at risk of violence
- Reduce the next generation’s exposure to gun violence through education on the risks of gun ownership
- Litigate to defend evidence-based gun policies and challenge extreme gun rights policies and practices
The Morningstar Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 1982. In fiscal year 2017, the Morningstar Foundation reported $16,533,591 in revenue and $14,476,618 in expenditures, which included grants to many left-of-center organizations.
Some of the recipients include:
- Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence
- The Southern Poverty Law Center
- States United to Prevent Gun Violence
- Violence Policy Center
In 2001, Johns Hopkins University renamed its School of Hygiene and Public Health to the Bloomberg School of Public Health. The change came after Michael Bloomberg donated more than $100 million to the university – the largest cash gift in the school’s 125-year history.
“I’m grateful and proud to have my name linked with the world’s greatest public health school,” Bloomberg said in 2001. “I’ve always supported Johns Hopkins just because it gives me great personal pleasure to be associated with faculty, researchers. and students who do such tremendous work on issues that really matter. This honor is really icing on that cake for me.”
This story is presented by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and wouldn’t be possible without you. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support more pro-gun stories like this.
About Lee Williams
Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer,” is the chief editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.
“Marxists’ ‘love’ of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community, there is no room left for freedom.” ~ Ludwig Von Mises.
“Guaranteed Chaos,” the currency of leftists:
As NY’s Democrat governor, with a bigoted sneer, crows about “reducing gun violence,” by making it ever more difficult and onerous for law-abiding New Yorkers even to acquire, much less carry, guns of any kind, she simultaneously institutes her “Raise-the-Age Law”.
This new law diverts gun-bearing, violent criminals who are under the age of twenty-one from regular Criminal Court to “Family Court,” putting them out of reach of local prosecutors.
Thus, youths who are illegally carrying guns and even actively using them in the commission of violent felonies will never confront a tempestuous prosecutor in a court of law to answer for their crime(s).
Instead, they now go to “Family Court,” where they get nothing more than a slap on the wrist and are subsequently sent home, and then (to the surprise of no one) promptly re-offend with guns! This will happen over and over, so long as they are under the age of twenty-one.
Thus, in NY, youthful offenders can commit violent crimes using illegal guns with impunity!
Simultaneously, as this (ever-growing) criminal element is thus empowered, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens are sternly told (from the mouths of heavily armed Democrat political hypocrites) that they shouldn’t own guns
NYS early-released 3,900 prison inmates (including many violent offenders) from prison, ostensibly due to COVID-19.
NJ released 5,300, supposedly for the same reason.
As anyone could have predicted, a large percentage of these convicts re-offended almost immediately!
In order to manufacture “guaranteed chaos,” Democrat politicians don’t want violent criminals locked up. They want them out, actively committing crimes, because chaos (that they cynically manufacture, as we see) is always their convenient pretext for taking away our rights and liberties as American citizens.
While piously scolding law-abiding citizens for wanting to own and carry guns (for the personal protection that they refuse to provide), leftist politicians actively empower, promote, and apologize for violent criminals who do their dirty work for them.
Guaranteed chaos is thus their cynical way of “growing government.”
Marxists (currently masquerading as “Democrats”) are all alike, and they are not good people.
Leftist politics does not attract good people
Never has!
Have we forgotten the way both Stalin and Mao, adhering to this identical leftist philosophy and identical rationalizations, ruthlessly murdered millions?
“Movements associated with Freud and Marx both claimed foundations in rationality and scientific understanding of the world. Both perceived themselves to be at war with weird, manipulative fantasies of religions. And yet both invented their own fantasies, that are just as weird.” ~ Jaron Lanier.
/John
About John Farnam & Defense Training International, Inc
As a defensive weapons and tactics instructor, John Farnam will urge you, based on your beliefs, to make up your mind about what you would do when faced with an imminent lethal threat. You should, of course, also decide what preparations you should make in advance if any. Defense Training International wants to ensure that its students fully understand the physical, legal, psychological, and societal consequences of their actions or in-actions.
It is our duty to make you aware of certain unpleasant physical realities intrinsic to Planet Earth. Mr. Farnam is happy to be your counselor and advisor. Visit: www.defense-training.com
Federal investigators asked banks to scour customer transactions for terms like ‘Trump’ or ‘MAGA’ and purchases at stores including Dick’s Sporting Goods and Bass Pro Shops after the Capitol riot, shocking Republican probe claims
- Federal officials investigating Jan. 6 asked banks to filter through customer transactions including key terms like ‘MAGA’ and ‘Trump’
- The government has been ‘watching’ Americans who frequent Bass Pro Shops, Cabela’s and other outdoors stores that sell guns
- The Treasury Department also warned banks of ‘extremism’ indicators like the purchase of a religious text, like a Bible
- Top Republican Jim Jordan says the transactions have ‘no apparent criminal nexus’ and is demanding information from Treasury
Federal investigators asked U.S. banks to scour customer transactions for key terms like ‘MAGA’ and ‘Trump’ to identify ‘extremism’ in the aftermath of January 6, shocking details uncovered by Republicans reveal.
According to bombshell documents obtained by the House’s ‘weaponization’ committee led by Chairman Jim Jordan, the federal government has been ‘watching’ Americans who frequent outdoor stores that sell guns – or who are religious.
Treasury Department officials suggested that banks review transactions at sporting and recreational supplies stores like Cabela’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Bass Pro Shops in order ‘to detect customers whose transactions may reflect ‘potential active shooters.”
Federal investigators suggested that banks use search terms like ‘MAGA’ and ‘Trump’ to identify purchased that could be associated with ‘extremism’ 
Transportation charges for travel to areas with no apparent purpose could be an indicator of ‘extremism,’ according to the letter
Subscriptions to news outlets containing ‘extremist’ views would also be an indicator for financial instructions to look at, according to the material the Treasury provided to banks.
‘Did you shop at Bass Pro Shop yesterday or purchase a Bible? If so, the federal government may be watching you,’ Jordan posted on X.
‘We now know the federal government flagged terms like ‘MAGA’ and ‘TRUMP,’ to financial institutions if Americans completed transactions using those terms,’ he wrote in another post. ‘What was also flagged? If you bought a religious text, like a BIBLE, or shopped at Bass Pro Shop.’
The federal officials may have illegally provided financial institutions with suggested search terms for ‘identifying transactions on behalf of federal law enforcement,’ said Jordan.
DailyMail.com reached out to the Treasury Department for comment.
Jordan is also demanding information from a Treasury official, Noah Bishoff, after the alarming documents came to light.
‘Despite these transactions having no apparent criminal nexus — and, in fact, relate to Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights — [the Treasury] seems to have adopted a characterization of these Americans as potential threat actors,’ Jordan wrote.
Purchases from Bass Pro Shops could also be an indicator of extremism
The committee also obtained documents indicating officials suggested that banks query purchases with keywords such as ‘Dick’s Sporting Goods’
‘This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with and at the request of federal law enforcement, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious doubts about [the Treasury’s] respect for fundamental liberties.’
‘In other words, [the Treasury] urged large financial instructions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression,’ said the committee’s letter to Bishoff.
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday called the revelation ‘yet another glaring example of the weaponized federal government targeting conservatives.’
Republicans are also requesting that Bishoff appear before the committee for a transcribed interview by January 31.
Everytown for Gun Safety, the billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobbying group, was making headlines over the weekend because a state-by-state new scorecard named California as “first in the nation” for having the most restrictive gun control laws.
In a report published by the Sacramento Bee, Everytown—often mischaracterized by the establishment media as a “gun safety” organization—and its subsidiary, Moms Demand Action, were taking credit for tough gun laws. A volunteer with the California Moms chapter was quoted boasting, “For over a decade, our grassroots army has worked in lockstep with our gun safety champions to keep California families safe from senseless acts of gun violence — this ranking showcases how far we’ve come and the road ahead.”
However, there was a glaring omission in the story. California, according to a recent report from Statista, also produced the biggest homicide body count of any state in the union in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available.
During 2022, the website notes, 2,197 Californians were murdered, a fact about which the gun control crowd has so far remained quiet.
As reported elsewhere by Ammoland News, the latest restrictive gun law known as SB2 is being challenged in federal court, and based on a ruling by a federal court panel Saturday which restored a preliminary injunction granted by District Judge Cormack J. Carney in December, the law could be in big trouble. The case is known as May v. Bonta, filed by the Second Amendment Foundation and the California Rifle & Pistol Association.
Everytown made headlines a few days ago when CNN reported the group’s prediction that some 298,000 lives “could be saved from the nation’s wave of gun violence” if only all states would adopt restrictive gun control laws like California.
But a quick look at the “Top 8” states on the Everytown honor roll might give lawmakers in the other 49 states cause to step back and take a deep breath.
Trailing California in the top spots are New York (762 slayings in 2022, according to Statista), Illinois (881 slayings, most of them in Chicago), Connecticut (136 murders), Hawaii (28 slayings; tiny state), Massachusetts (148 killings), New Jersey (254 murders reported), and Maryland (511 slayings).
Contrast those states with places such as Montana, identified by Ammo.com as the state with the highest percentage of gun ownership (66.3%) and a 2022 body count of just 49, yet with the low ranking of 47 on Everytown’s list of 50, and the gun control group’s credibility suffers. Neighboring Wyoming has the most guns per capita, the Ammo.com report noted, with 245.8 guns for every 1,000 residents. Wyoming is 44th on Everytown’s list, even though with all those people owning guns, the state produced only 14 murders in 2022.
Two more important points were listed by the Ammo.com report:
- “The top five states for gun ownership comprise only .8% of the nation’s firearm-related homicides (185 homicides between all 5 states).
- “The bottom five states for gun ownership accounted for 4% of the nation’s firearm-related homicides (1,038 firearm-related homicides).”
Rounding out the Top 5 states for gun ownership are Alaska, Idaho, and West Virginia. Everytown’s scorecard places them at 41st, 48th, and 27th, respectively.
This tale of irony is being overshadowed by the opening of the civil trial against the National Rifle Association and three of its senior leaders in recent years—Wayne LaPierre, Wilson “Woody” Phillips and John Frazer—unfolds in a New York courtroom. The civil lawsuit was brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has leveled allegations of financial misconduct, according to UPI. The 74-year-old LaPierre last Friday announced his resignation from the position as executive vice president, which he has held for more than three decades. The resignation is effective Jan. 31.
By no small coincidence, Everytown for Gun Safety is headquartered in New York, same as the NRA, though the latter has been around since 1871.
Also coincidental to the Everytown grade for California is the state’s adoption of three laws, including SB2, which prohibits licensed concealed carry in a broad list of so-called “sensitive places.” Perhaps not surprisingly, some California law enforcement agencies have announced they will not enforce provisions of SB2 while it is being adjudicated.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms was quick to criticize the Everytown scorecard.
“One of the signals this is bogus research is the way Everytown graded Washington State, where the Citizens Committee is headquartered,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb in a statement to the media. “Washington is position ninth on the list, and is described avs ‘making progress.’
The state has adopted increasingly restrictive gun laws in recent years, and the number of homicides has more than doubled since 2014, according to FBI data and statistics from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs. Seattle just set a new homicide record in 2023. If that’s what Everytown calls ‘making progress,’ we would be better off going back to living in caves.”
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.