Year in Review: Courts, Clinton and crowded GOP field dominated 2015

by Dave Workman | Senior Editor

With the prospect of a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential candidacy looming larger on the horizon for 2016, and gun rights versus gun control being deliberately rammed into the political debate as a campaign issue, this year is ending with a dark cloud.

Anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety lobbying group is busy all over the map, and a gun control measure similar to one he helped pass last year in Washington will be on the ballot in Nevada next fall.

Meanwhile, the year opened with a lawsuit filed to contest the main sections of that Washington law—Initiative 594—with the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) joined by several individuals and groups. While the initial lawsuit was dismissed by a federal district court in Tacoma on “standing” grounds, it was quickly appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and as this issue was going to press, a ruling was still in the waiting.

Another lawsuit in Washington State, this one against the City of Seattle over a “gun violence tax,” is also pending. That lawsuit was filed by SAF, the National Rifle Association (NRA) , National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), two retail outlets and two private citizens.

Long story short, 2015 has been an interesting and busy year, and 2016 will undoubtedly be busier with the presidential election in November.

In January at the annual Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show in Las Vegas, SAF launched a new national firearms Training Division.

A lawsuit was filed by the families of nine student victims and one wounded teacher from Sandy Hook Elementary, challenging the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, seeking to hold Bushmaster liable because one of its rifles was used in the attack.

In Washington State, which legalized recreational marijuana two years ago, pot smokers suddenly discovered they had problems in trying to purchase firearms under I-594 background check mandates. Marijuana use is still illegal under federal law, and the form 4473 requires prospective gun buyers to reveal if they are pot smokers. Lying on that form is a federal crime.

Police in Illinois reported that they had experienced no serious problems after one year under the state’s concealed carry law, which was forced by the courts following an SAF victory in the 7th Circuit Appellate Court.

Former anti-gun New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, whose son, Andrew, now serves in that office, died on New Year’s Day at 82. He was remembered in the firearms community as the man who infamously insulted NRA members and hunters as people “who drink beer and lie to their wives about where they had been all weekend.”

On Jan. 6, PBS aired a documentary titled “Gunned Down: The Power of the NRA.” TGM Executive Editor Joseph Tartaro wrote that the program “doesn’t merit an award.” It was a one-hour Frontline episode that did not find any appeal among gun owning viewers.

Jump in CCW

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) scored a major court victory in federal district court in Texas when District Judge Reed O’Connor issued a 28-page opinion that “the federal interstate handgun transfer ban burdens conduct that falls within the scope of the Second Amendment.” The case was supported by SAF, and it was a rare foray into the legal arena for the traditionally grassroots-oriented CCRKBA.

Coincidentally, Texas Sen. John Cornyn filed legislation dubbed the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, which seeks to mandate national reciprocity among the states. The measure quickly got support from the NRA and other gun rights groups.

Speaking of concealed carry, SAF filed yet another lawsuit against the District of Columbia, challenging the city’s “good reason” requirement for license applicants. This case is Wrenn v. District of Columbia, and it follows in the wake of SAF’s successful Palmer case. A few weeks later, the District dropped its appeal of the Palmer case.

In February it was estimated that more than 11 million citizens were licensed to carry, a figure that jumped later in the year to more than 12.5 million. This roughly figures to about 5% of the adult population, and it is indicative of an interesting trend. While the number of licensed individuals has climbed along with overall gun sales, violent crime has been declining. This puts the lie to morbid predictions over the years from the anti-gun lobby that more guns in private hands would translate to more homicides.

As something of a footnote, TGM reported in March about a study of women gunowners that shows a marked increase in female participation in the shooting sports. That information came from the NSSF, and one of the findings was that the most popular type of firearm being purchased is a semi-auto pistol.

There was an embarrassing “misfire” at an international symposium on so-called “smart guns” held in Seattle early in the year. As reporters and the audience watched, staffers at the event could not get a video projector to work, leading one reporter to ask the moderator how anyone could expect people to trust smart guns when a projector couldn’t even function properly.

Bullet ban bungle

When the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) put forth a proposed ban on the popular M855 green-tipped round for AR-15 rifles, grassroots activists and especially AR shooters roared into action. Their reaction to the proposal was one for the books, flooding the ATF with more than 80,000 comments.

The agency proposed the change on the grounds that M855 ammunition is “armor piercing.” It also happens to be a favorite of target shooters, recreational plinkers, varmint shooters and others who simply want lots of inexpensive ammunition to run through their sport-utility rifles.

The controversy became a donnybrook that many believe led to the departure of B. Todd Jones as ATF director, which apparently he had been planning, but the flap sped things up. That was after 239 members of the US House of Representatives sent him a letter, followed by a second letter signed by 53 members of the Senate.

Perhaps the final push came from SAF, which aired a 60-second radio and television advertisement calling on people to oppose the ban. Only 24 hours after the first commercial aired, ATF announced it was shelving the proposed ammo ban.

It was good fodder for the NRA annual meeting in Nashville in April, which started a countdown of the last 700 days of the Obama administration. Nobody in the firearms community will be sorry to see Obama leave office, though with the prospect of a Hillary Clinton election, that’s a double-edged sword.

That gathering, incidentally, produced the second-highest attendance for any NRA annual meeting.

This past spring, a federal district court in California upheld that state’s scheme to stick honest gunowners with the bill for the state’s law enforcement activities, and the decision was appealed by the NRA and California Rifle & Pistol Association. This case revolves around a Dealer’s Record of Sale (DROS) fee to fund the state’s Armed Prohibited Person System.

Also in April, federal charges were brought against the father of a Washington State teen who killed four classmates in the Marysville-Pilchuck High School shooting in October 2014, which many believe helped pass I-594 at the polls ten days later. Raymond Lee Fryberg, it was discovered during the shooting investigation, had illegally purchased several firearms including the .40-caliber pistol used by his son in the attack. The teen killed himself after shooting his classmates.

Fryberg had been under a protection order dating back some years, but he continued to purchase firearms at a retail outlet, filling out the Form 4473 and denying that he was under the court order. This fall he was convicted on all counts in federal court in Seattle.

In Oregon, anti-gun State Sen. Floyd Prozanski filed a “universal background check” bill that was later voted into law, thanks in part to the election of a Democrat majority with support from Bloomberg last year.

Major court challenge

At mid-year, SAF launched what could become a major First Amendment case involving Defense Distributed, a Texas-based firm that is challenging the State Department over censorship. The case could have far-reaching implications on several constitutional grounds, alleging prior restraint over online publication of information relating to three-dimensional printing of arms.

The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division.

Defendants in the lawsuit are Secretary of State John Kerry, the Department of State, the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls and four State Department officials. SAF and Defense Distributed are represented by an impressive legal team led by attorney Alan Gura of Gura & Possessky, with William “Tommy” Jacks, Bill Mateja, and David Morris of Fish & Richardson, plus export control counsel Matthew Goldstein, and constitutional law Professor Josh Blackman, something of a “dream team” of attorneys.

According to the complaint, Defense Distributed generated technical information on various gun-related items, and had published the information on the Internet. The company was then warned that it may have released technical data controlled by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) without prior authorization from the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC). Defense Distributed subsequently removed all of the freely published files from its servers, the complaint says.

Also this past summer, less than a day after the Cleveland, OH, City Council passed a gun control law that one member admitted was “not designed to stop gun violence,” but only reflect the “council’s values,” the city was sued by Ohioans for Concealed Carry (OFCC) and one of its individual members who resides in the city.

The lawsuit suggested that the new ordinance may violate state law that brought uniformity to Ohio gun laws.

In a press release announcing the lawsuit, OFCC asserted, “In 2007 The Ohio Legislature adopted Ohio Revised Code 9.68, a statewide comprehensive approach to uniformly standardizing firearms laws across the state of Ohio. One year later the Ohio Supreme Court decided in Ohioans For Concealed Carry v. City of Clyde that the statute was a general law and prevailed in a home rule challenge.”

In 2010, the organization recalled, Cleveland challenged R.C. 9.68 again in Cleveland v. State and the court again upheld the law stating, “R.C. 9.68 is a general law that displaced municipal firearm ordinances and does not unconstitutionally infringe on municipal home rule authority.”

Now, five years later, the city is at it again.

About that same time, and in the same state, a ruling by the US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in a Toledo case amounted to a victory for open carry activists and Fourth Amendment advocates.

A three-judge panel on the court ruled that Toledo resident Shawn Northrup could sue a city police officer for detaining him illegally on June 16, 2010 because he was openly carrying a semi-automatic pistol while walking with his wife, daughter, grandson and their dog.

According to the summary of the incident, a motorcyclist identified as Alan Rose stopped and loudly told Northrup that he “can’t walk around with a gun like that!” An exchange of words ensued between Rose and Denise Northrup, Shawn’s wife. Rose subsequently called the police to report a man walking around with a gun. The police dispatcher said this was legal, the court narrative noted, provided the person has a carry permit. At that point, Rose apparently had a change of heart, but the dispatcher sent an officer to investigate, anyway.

Northrup was stopped, disarmed and handcuffed, and detained for about 30 minutes by Officer David Bright, according to court documents.

The court noted that “Clearly established law required Bright to point to evidence that Northrup may have been ‘armed and dangerous.’ Yet all he ever saw was that Northrup was armed—and legally so. To allow stops in this setting ‘would effectively eliminate Fourth Amendment protections for lawfully armed persons’.”

More drama

Earlier this year, it seemed to New York gunowners that a special kind of karma had been at work when two of the three men responsible for passage of that state’s much-despised SAFE Act were indicted on corruption charges, as reported by Executive Editor Tartaro in April. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was indicted in January with additional charges in April, while State Sen. Dean Skelos, leader of the Republican Majority conference, was also indicted.

About the same time that the US Fish & Wildlife Service was reporting its annual apportionments to the states from the federal Pittman-Robertson fund—this year totaling $808,492,189—wolf proponents were alarmed that a female wolf was struck and killed along Interstate 90 in Washington State.

In Texas, a couple of would-be terrorists were shot dead by police in Garland outside an exhibition of cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad. It raised concerns that the attack was an intended copycat of the January Charley Hebdo massacre in Paris, where strict French gun laws failed to prevent the attack. Texas cops are armed, and that made the difference.

On June 30, a couple of former CNN employees were involved in a deadly gun battle in an Albuquerque, NM, motel where they were staying. The journalists, Chuck de Caro and his wife, Lynne Russell, were legally armed when a gunman forced his way into their room. When the robber opened fire on de Caro, he shot back. When the firefight was over, the bad guy was mortally wounded and had staggered outside to the parking lot. He was later identified as a parole violator from Tennessee. Both de Caro and Russell have been outspoken advocates of concealed carry.

On July 16, a man identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez opened fire on military offices in Chattanooga, TN. Four Marines were killed initially, and a wounded sailor died a few days later. The gunman was killed by responding police officers.

The shooting set off a firestorm debate over arming of on-duty military personnel, and also brought forth some volunteer security efforts by private citizens, which was ultimately discouraged, but no less sent a message that armed Americans were not about to allow this to happen again. The revelation that there were signs posting the facilities as “gun free” only helped to spark the controversy.

It was also revealed in July that Tim Burgess, president of the Seattle City Council, was going to push a so-called “gun violence tax” on the sale of firearms and ammunition inside the city limits. This, according to critics, is in direct violation of Washington’s long-standing preemption law that places sole authority for firearms regulation in the hands of the legislature.

In August, the city council unanimously passed the tax, which set a $25 fee on the sale of each gun and five cents per cartridge. The city estimated it would realize $300,000 to $500,000 annually, to be used to finance anti-gun “research.”

The city was promptly sued in an historic move by SAF, NRA and NSSF. It is the first time all three organizations have jointly participated as plaintiffs in a lawsuit, and attorneys for the three organizations and their co-plaintiffs will be in court Dec. 18 for a summary judgment hearing. Burgess confirmed that the city was receiving free legal support for the case.

Four Second Amendment organizations, including SAF and CCRKBA pooled their resources and are offering a $4,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individual or individuals responsible for the slaying of Donnie Chin, a respected activist in Seattle’s International District, and also a devoted firearms enthusiast and collector, in the early hours of July 23. Not surprisingly, Chin’s involvement in the firearms community did not get any attention from the mainstream press covering the story.

CCWs up, murders down

The gun prohibition lobby was left scrambling when gun rights groups quickly jumped on new revelations at mid-year that concealed carry was soaring at the same time that murder rates were declining.

A report from the Crime Prevention Research Center suggested that one reason the number of permits and licenses has increased is because Barack Obama is in the White House.

While the number of permit applications has soared, “there appears to be another factor: President Obama’s election in 2008,” the report states. “Not only did Obama’s election increase gun sales, it also increased the number of concealed handgun permits.”

The 27-page report lists the states in terms of how many adults possess licenses or permits to carry, with the Top Ten being, in this order, Alabama, South Dakota, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Georgia, Iowa, West Virginia and Washington.

There are some states that do not require permits or licenses to carry, so the number of law-abiding citizens who are actually carrying defensive sidearms may even be higher than the 12.8 million-plus mentioned in the report.

Anti-gunners wasted no time trying to discredit the report.

According to the report, over the past year, 1.7 million additional new permits have been issued—a 15.4% increase in just one year. This is the largest ever single-year increase in the number of concealed handgun permits.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who ran for president but then bowed out of the race earlier this year, signed legislation ending the state’s handgun waiting period. Previously, the state had imposed a 48-hour waiting period on handgun sales.

After the Supreme Court ruled that all states should recognize same-sex marriages, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms called for the same consideration for concealed carry licenses and permits.

A Colorado jury found Aurora theater gunman James Holmes guilty of multiple counts of murder on July 16 following a three-month trial. Holmes will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

In Maine, Gov. Paul LePage “quietly” signed legislation allowing the carrying of concealed handguns without a permit, shortly after Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback had signed similar legislation in his state, adding two more states to the “constitutional carry” column.

On the other hand, legislation was introduced in Congress by Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) that would undo what the NRA called a “critical safety valve” in federal law that allows a firearm transfer to proceed three days after a NICS check is initiated, provided that the system had not notified a dealer that transferring a firearm would violate the law.

This came after the arrest of Charleston, SC, mass shooting suspect Dylann Storm Roof, 21, after nine people were gunned down during a bible study. Roof had passed a NICS check even after having been arrested on an unrelated charge earlier in the year.

President Obama, speaking to reporters, stated, “I don’t need to be constrained about the emotions that tragedies like this raise. I’ve had to make statements like this too many times. We don’t have all the facts but we do know that once again innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.”

Down in Puerto Rico, gun owners won a significant victory when the Commonwealth Court eliminated the firearms registry and licensing requirements. SAF had provided some strategic advice for the lawsuit, and the verdict was quickly appealed.

‘Sporting Purposes’ targeted

Several gun rights organizations have thrown their weight behind federal legislation that would replace the “sporting purposes” and “sporting use” standards set down in the 1968 Gun Control Act, and ostensibly rein in what the bill’s sponsor called “the over-reaching hand of the federal government.”

Rep. Rob Bishop’s HR-2710 is seen by a growing number of people as a slap at abuses and arbitrary regulation of arms and ammunition by the ATF.

In a statement introducing his bill, Bishop noted, “The founding fathers recognized that the right to bear arms is fundamentally tied to self-defense. This is as true today as it was over two centuries ago when the Bill of Rights was ratified.

“The ATF,” Bishop said, “has exploited vagaries present in federal gun law to chip away at basic rights. This legislation will slap the over-reaching hand of the federal government and restore some of the freedoms our grandparents enjoyed.”

Announcing his support for the measure, Alan Gottlieb, chairman of CCRKBA, followed that reasoning.

“There is no ‘sporting purpose’ stipulation in the Second Amendment,” he said, “and there should not be one in federal law. The right to keep and bear arms is not just about hunting or target shooting. It is time for this restrictive language to be replaced.”

Gun rights activists in and outside of New Jersey blamed the state’s gun laws for the June murder of a woman in Berlin Township, about 15 miles southeast from Philadelphia in the state’s southern region. Carol Bowne had applied for a gunowner’s permit on April 21. Forty days later, she visited the police department to check on the status of her application. Two days after that, she was stabbed to death in the driveway of her home by the man against whom she had a protection order.

Police hunting for the alleged killer found him dead three days after the killing, an apparent suicide by hanging.

Scott Bach, executive director of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs (ANJRPC), was harshly critical of the Garden State’s gun laws in an interview with NJ.com. He asserted that New Jersey authorities are “notorious for violating state-mandated time frames” for issuing permits.

Midway through the year, anti-gun Congressional Democrats introduced new versions of old agenda items, and pledged to pursue their agenda in Congress.

The Handgun Trigger Safety Act was announced by Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), mandating that five years after enactment, all handguns manufactured in the United States must feature so-called “smart gun” technology. The measure would also require that “private dealers” would have to retrofit used handguns within 10 years before those sidearms are re-sold.

A Texas college student filed a federal lawsuit claiming a First Amendment violation by Blinn College, a small two-year school near Houston after being told by an administrator earlier this year that she needed permission to post a gun rights sign that said “Defend Gun Rights on Campus.”

According to Nico Perrino, associate director of communications for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), student Nicole Sanders filed the lawsuit in federal district court in Austin.

Perrino told TGM that Sanders is “a gun rights person.” She was standing outside a small space dubbed the “free speech zone” with a companion, Chris Bradford, for about 90 minutes on Feb. 2 of this year.

Horror on camera

The nation was stunned Aug. 26 when two journalists from WDBJ in Virginia, reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward, were brutally gunned down during a live remote broadcast by a former television colleague, Vester Lee Flanagan. The killer, who used the on-air name of Bryce Williams, bought his gun at a Virginia gun shop and passed a background check.

Anti-gunners quickly moved to exploit the horrific shooting. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner made a speech on the Senate floor, paying tribute to the two slain journalists and pushing a gun control agenda that gun rights activists say would not have prevented that crime. Virginia Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine proposed a new gun control measure that would require gun sellers to take “reasonable steps” to assure they were not selling firearms to disqualified people—without defining those steps.

CCRKBA just as quickly responded, suggesting that Kaine expects firearms retailers and private citizens who may sell guns at gun shows or other private transactions to somehow be able to read the minds of the prospective buyer, and perhaps even tell the future.

Parker’s father, who had previously run for office, quickly began vocally lobbying for gun control, even though there was no indication that any of the proposals tossed around would have prevented Flanagan from getting a gun.

Early on Labor Day morning, a lawyer and former aide to anti-gun New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was fatally wounded in a shooting in Brooklyn. Carey Gabay was involved in a march called J’Ouvert, which precedes the annual West Indian American Day Carnival in Brooklyn. Gabay had been appointed First Deputy Counsel for Empire State Development in January.

Cuomo quickly demanded more gun control legislation at the federal level, and according to CNN, he “insisted that all people looking to purchase a firearm should undergo background checks to prevent criminals and the mentally ill from obtaining a gun.” But gun buyers already go through a background check, and New York has some of the toughest gun laws in the nation. That didn’t stop perhaps three different shooters from opening fire, because shell casings from three different guns were found, according to the New York Times.

Speaking of terrible things on camera, anti-gun New York Sen. Charles Schumer joined forces with his cousin, comedian Amy Schumer, to announce a new push for gun control that focuses on improving the National Instant Check System (NICS).

But critics quickly accused the Schumers of rebranding a worn agenda.

Schumer’s scheme was designed to reward states that enter data on mental illness or criminal convictions into the NICS system, while withholding funds from states that do not comply. According to Reason magazine, “This idea for hoovering up and centralizing sensitive information isn’t a new one, and it’s likely to founder on the rocks of opposition from gun rights activists and mental health professionals alike.”

Polls tell the tale

A Pew Research Center poll conducted in July showed widespread support for background checks, and a majority of Democrats backing a ban on so-called “assault weapons” while less than half of Republicans supported such a ban.

According to Pew, 85% of Americans support expanded background checks. That includes 88% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans. By a wide margin (79%) they also support laws prohibiting mentally ill people from buying guns, and 70% overall support “the creation of a federal database to track all gun sales.”

It was not the only opinion poll on guns and gun rights this year that showed a consistent pattern with Democrats favoring more gun laws, and Republicans opposing new laws, or simply encouraging enforcement of existing statutes.

National polling by Pew, Rasmussen and others this year has shown what veteran gun rights activists have known for a long time. Those identifying themselves as Democrats are gun control proponents more often than not. That point could become a campaign issue in 2016, and was even brought up in a November report in The Hill, a popular Washington, DC, news organ, that revealed Senate Democrats were having problems with gun control. The story was headlined, “Liberal fervor for gun control puts Senate candidates in tough spot.” The story quoted an anonymous Democrat strategist who counseled against making gun control a “primary concern.”

Apparently, Democrats don’t want to push the issue too hard at the congressional level because they want to take back the Senate, where judicial appointments are confirmed. The next president is likely to appoint more than one Supreme Court justice, which could have a significant impact on any new gun rights cases.

One thing the Pew poll revealed was that 85% of Democrats want a federal database tracking gun sales, while 55% of Republicans liked that idea, the poll results said. Gun rights activists called that a de facto gun registration approach.

Open Carry ‘swatting’?

The anti-gun Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) raised eyebrows this fall when it suggested that anybody who spots a citizen carrying openly or concealed should call the police immediately if they feel that person constitutes “a threat.”

The supposition was that anybody making such a call will believe that any armed citizen is a threat, and thus make a “man with a gun” call to the local police or sheriff’s department. It’s called “harassment by police proxy,” and critics immediately said this sort of activity might be dangerous to the people involved.

According to Fox News, which broke the story, the CSGV posted a message on its Facebook page stating, “If you see someone carrying a firearm in public—openly or concealed—and have ANY doubts about their intent, call 911 immediately and ask police to come to the scene. Never put your safety, or the safety of your loved ones, at the mercy of weak gun laws that arm individuals in public with little or no criminal and/or mental health screening.”

Still another strange gun control scheme was announced by officials in Tacoma, WA. They launched a “drop box” project to allow people to dispose of unwanted guns anonymously. The effort was promptly criticized by Evergreen State gun rights activists, who contended that it is not just a bad idea, it might even be dangerous. One person even suggested that nothing would prevent somebody from hooking up a chain to such a box and making off with it. But the story suggested the drop box would be secure enough to prevent that. One possibility is that the drop box would be actually inside a building with the drop slot outside.

California dreamin’

In October, the Los Angeles City Council began considering a so-called “gun violence” tax that copies what the City of Seattle did in July, placing a $25 sales tax on firearms and a nickel on the sale of each round of centerfire ammunition.

Councilmen Paul Krekorian and Paul Koretz, were pushing the idea, insisting that, “While taxing the sales of firearms and ammunition will not prevent gun violence on its own, funding gun violence prevention programs could prove to be an initial step in creating a larger policy to save lives throughout the City and the nation as a whole. With the majority of gun related deaths being suicide or a combination of homicide and suicide, prevention programs may be able to reach those contemplating such measures.”

The Los Angeles measure would also require gunowners to report lost or stolen firearms.

Two years after police in Santa Clara, CA. seized firearms belonging to a woman whose husband suffered an episode that resulted in his being held for a 72-hour psychiatric evaluation, the Second Amendment Foundation has filed a lawsuit on her behalf in federal court, seeking the return of her guns and an injunction to prevent future violations.

Joining SAF in the legal action is the CalGuns Foundation (CGF). They sued on behalf of Lori Rodriguez, whose firearms were taken in January 2013. Her husband, Edward, was taken to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in the incident, which did not involve any firearms.

The guns were locked in a California-approved safe at the time, and since then, the combination has been changed so that only Mrs. Rodriguez can gain access.

The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California. Attorney Don Kilmer of San Jose represents the plaintiffs.

“The City of San Jose or any other jurisdiction simply cannot be allowed to seize someone’s legally-owned property because of the actions of a spouse or some other third party,” SAF Executive Vice President Gottlieb explained.

Oregon nightmare

Oct. 1 will be remembered in the Pacific Northwest for the campus shooting at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College (UCC). Anti-gunners, including President Obama, wasted little time in politicizing the event, but at least this time he admitted it.

When it was announced that he would actually visit Roseburg, where the shooting occurred, the local newspaper publisher, David Jaques told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, “I think the president, first of all, is not welcome in the community.” Jaques mentioned several local public officials who apparently concurred, suggesting that the visit was only to exploit the college shooting to push an agenda.

“He wants to come to our community,” Jaques observed during the on-air interview, “and stand on the corpses of our loved ones and make some kind of political point.”

On the day Obama did visit, he was greeted by gun rights demonstrators who had traveled from all over Oregon and Washington. He met briefly with the families of the victims and then flew north to Seattle for a fund raiser for anti-gun Democrat Sen. Patty Murray.

There was considerable confusion about whether the UCC campus is a true “gun-free zone,” because it appears that students and others who are legally licensed to carry in Oregon can be armed on school property. At least one student, a military veteran, told Fox News that he was carrying a sidearm but that a member of the staff told him to take shelter.

However, CBS and the Associated Press in Seattle reported that the campus is a gun-free zone, and quoted the college’s security policy, which states, “Possession, use, or threatened use of firearms (including but not limited to BB guns, air guns, water pistols, and paint guns) ammunition, explosives, dangerous chemicals, or any other objects as weapons on college property, except as expressly authorized by law or college regulations, is prohibited.”

Earlier this fall, a 2-1 ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down some of the District of Columbia’s handgun registration laws as unconstitutional including a regulation that limited District gunowners to one handgun registration per month.

There was no immediate indication about how this ruling might affect other litigation challenging the District’s gun laws, now or in the future. But one national gun rights leader was upbeat.

“Any time a Federal Appeals Court strikes down any anti-gun law it is a great victory for gun rights,” said SAF’s Gottlieb. “I think this ruling is going to really help the Second Amendment Foundation’s Wrenn v. District of Columbia case that is challenging the DC carry law requiring ‘good cause’ or ‘special need’ to get a permit that is now before the same Appeals Court.”

Writing for the majority, District Judge Douglas Ginsburg noted that a requirement that people bring their handguns to the Metropolitan Police Department headquarters might actually be contrary to public safety. He said the city had provided no “substantial evidence” that public safety benefited from making people bring a handgun to police headquarters.

Bad precedent?

A Wisconsin jury awarded $5.73 million to two Milwaukee police officers in their lawsuit against a local suburban gun store that they alleged had been negligent in the sale of a handgun to a so-called “straw buyer” that was used by a teen to shoot both of them about a month after the transaction. The verdict against Badger Guns could have “national ramifications,” according to anti-gun Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Anti-gunners could use the decision to campaign for repeal of the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which was adopted to prevent what were considered harassment lawsuits against the firearms industry.

But according to Lawrence Keane, vice president and general counsel for NSSF, the Badger case actually demonstrated that the PLCAA works as intended.

Meanwhile, NSSF reported that gun sales continued strong througholut 2015. September produced a record number of background checks conducted through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

As the year draws to a close, SAF, CCRKBA, NRA and other groups continue to sound alarms about the threats to Second Amendment rights.

This year’s near-record turnout at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Phoenix underscored the importance of the coming battles at all levels. Activists from every corner of the country are preparing for an all-out battle royal, especially with what appears to be a shoe-in nomination for Hillary Clinton on the horizon.

With gun rights versus gun control sure to be a central issue in the 2016 presidential campaign, as well as many Senate and House races, and even state legislative contests, TGM will stay on top of developments as they happen.