By Tanya K Metaksa
U.S. Congress
According to Mark Chestnut, reporting in thruthaboutguns.com, Gun Owners of America has sent out an alert to its members warning them about possible “anti-gun shenanigans” at the Congressional session that comes at the end of one Congress and the inauguration of a new President and is known as a “lame duck” session.
He notes that, as I reported last week, the Democrats, who still control the Senate until January 2025, held a hearing on bump stocks. It is not unusual for departing Presidents to try and leave a legacy of executive orders. For example, in January 2016, then-President Barack Obama signed executive orders imposing gun control as he was leaving the White House. There is a distinct possibility that President Biden might try the same trick, even in the wake of his pardon for his son, Hunter, who was convicted on gun law violations earlier this year. Additionally, several bills that are awaiting passage before the next Congress would be vehicles that anti-gun Representatives or Senators could use to attach gun control amendments. We will be vigilant and inform you if such political tricks surface.
Biden Administration
While everyone was busy paying attention to politics this fall, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was quietly revising violent crime statistics to help out their pals in the Gun Control movement. According to crime researcher Dr. John Lott, the FBI released its 2022 “final” crime data in September 2023. This data showed a crime rate that fell 2.1% that year. However, since that date, those numbers have been updated. The new data includes thousands of murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults, but somehow they failed to include this troubling report that crime in 2022 increased by 4.5%, not dropping at all.
Here is Lott’s summary: “The actual changes in crimes are extensive. The updated data for 2022 report that there were 80,029 more violent crimes than in 2021 [FIGURE 1]. There were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies and 37,091 aggravated assaults. The question naturally arises: should the FBI’s 2023 numbers be believed?”
Complete with a graphic chart, the full report is available on the crimeresearch.org website. Read the article if you want accurate statistics to support the argument that crime has gone up, not down.
Marquette University Poll on Supreme Court
If you get your news from the primarily biased news media, you are probably confused about the public’s opinion of our current Supreme Court (SCOTUS). Marquette Law spent the first ten days of October running a poll on the public’s opinion of our highest court. A detailed summary can be found on this website. They asked the following question regarding the Second Amendment and SCOTUS: “In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that subject to some restrictions, the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home. How much do you favor or oppose this decision?”
The respondents answered favorably to that question 70% of the time, and only 12 percent strongly opposed the decision—no wonder this question got very little coverage from the mainstream media.
The deciding voting block — gun owners
Despite the media and the Democrat Party being all in on the issue of gun bans, restrictive laws targetting those of us, a sizeable majority, who believe that the Second Amendment is as important as the First Amendment and means “shall not be infringed,” it is very rare for politicians to acknowledge that we are a voting block to be reckoned with. In a New York Times interview, a new acknowledgment of this political fact came from Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. NRA-ILA described Pelosi whining “about gun rights voters to the New York Times.” This is what NRA-ILA wrote:“In an interview with Times reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Pelosi stated that cultural issues played an important role in the 2024 election. Garcia-Navarro asked the former House Speaker, “Why did voters who earned less than $100,000 go for Trump in such large numbers?” Pelosi responded in part, “Well, there are cultural issues involved in elections as well… Guns, that’s an issue.”
Rep. Pelosi knows a lot about elections. She began her first term in Congress on June 2, 1987, approximately 37 years ago. She won a special election to represent California’s 5th District after Representative Sala Burton passed away while in office. Although she wasn’t in leadership in 1994, she learned much under the 1994 Speaker Tom Foley from western Washington state.
In 1994, the President was Bill Clinton, who had already signed the Brady Bill in 1993 and decided that a federal assault weapons bill was just the ticket to being re-elected that year. In 1994, the Democrats had been in power in the House of Representatives for 40 years. Clinton thought the gun ban was a surefire winner. He got his Crime bill with an assault weapons ban finally passed in the House. But he had a fight on his hands. When the bill was finally passed in late September 1994, it was passed with one vote. But he had aggravated a hornet’s nest of gun owners. From Spokane, Washington, Speaker Foley’s district to Harry Johnston’s district in Fort Lauderdale, FL, and north to Sam Gejdenson’s district in Connecticut, they joined 51 more Democrats to fall to their Republican opponents. It was a massive loss. It was the second time in history that a sitting Speaker of the House was defeated in his re-election. Tom Foley joined Speaker William Pennington, who lost in the election of 1860, the year Abraham Lincoln was elected President.
In 2013, 19 years after the passage and 9 years after the sunsetting of the 1994 Clinton Assault Weapons ban, Speaker Foley passed away. President Clinton gave an eulogy and spoke about Speaker Foley: “He told me when he succeeded in putting the assault weapons ban back into the crime bill, “You can leave this in here, but there will be a lot of blood on the floor if we pass it. Many of us will not survive…if you put this in, there will be a lot of carnage. I thought he was wrong, but he was right, and he lost that election by 4,000 votes.”
Clinton went on to say:“I’d be a wealthy man if I had a dollar for every time in the last twenty years; I have found my mind drawn to that conversation. Was it worth his public service?…the price was high.”
By September 1994, Nancy Pelosi had been a representative for seven years. Like many other Democrats, she knew why those 54 politicians had been defeated, and thirty years after that election, she has not forgotten. For gun owners, the power of the ballot is huge!
State Legislation and local communities
It is November, and very few legislatures are still in session.
States that are still in session: California (recess), Illinois (recess), Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire (recess), New Jersey, Ohio (recess), New York (recess), Oklahoma (recess), North Carolina (recess), Oklahoma (recess), Pennsylvania, South Carolina (recess), Virginia (recess), Wisconsin (recess)
Texas: Next year, 2025, the Texas legislature begins its bi-annual session on January 14. Already, the following pro-gun bills have been introduced:
HB162 is an anti-red flag enforcement bill prohibiting governmental entities from recognizing, serving, or enforcing red flag confiscation orders. HB259 removes short-barreled rifles and shotguns from the Texas list of banned weapons. HB644 provides immunity to business owners who allow licensed concealed handguns on their premises. HB920 exempts firearms, ammunition, and firearms accessories from state sales and use taxes. HB1337 allows universal recognition of out-of-state carry licenses. HB1403 prohibits child placement and state agencies from requiring foster parents to provide lists of firearms kept in the home.
