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(AP) Less than six years ago, then-President Donald Trump took on the influential gun lobby after the deadliest massacre in modern U.S. history. He announced that he had told the National Rifle Association that bump stocks are gone, arguing they turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.

On Friday, Trumps campaign to return to the White House defended a Supreme Court decision to strike down his own ban on those devices. Trump has been endorsed by the NRA and claimed this year in a speech that he did nothing to restrict guns.

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The Supreme Court's ruling called new attention to Trump's complicated record on the Second Amendment, one that he has downplayed this year given his conservative base's aversion to gun control even as Americans broadly support stricter restrictions on firearms, according to public polling.

As president, Trump grappled with the high school massacre in Parkland, Florida and other mass shootings, and at times pledged to strengthen gun laws, only to back away from those vows.

At a meeting with survivors and family members of the Parkland shooting in 2018, for instance, Trump promised to be very strong on background checks and later scolded a Republican senator for being afraid of the NRA. He claimed he would stand up to the gun lobby and finally get results on quelling gun violence.

But he later retreated after a meeting with the group, expressing support for modest changes to the federal background check system and for arming teachers, while saying in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that there was not much political support (to put it mildly).

Now, he casts himself as the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House."

Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for his campaign, issued a statement Friday saying the court's decision should be respected.

President Trump has been and always will be a fierce defender of Americans Second Amendment rights and he is proud to be endorsed by the NRA, Leavitt said.

President Joe Biden called the Trump-era ban an important gun safety regulation, while the Democratic incumbent's campaign criticized Trump for nominating three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to strike down the ban.

Weapons of war have no place on the streets of America, but Trumps Supreme Court justices have decided the gun lobby is more important than the safety of our kids and our communities, said Michael Tyler, a Biden campaign spokesman.

The Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration overstepped when in 2018 it banned bump stocks after a mass shooting in Las Vegas where hundreds were wounded and dozens were killed. The devices allow a rate of fire comparable to machine guns.

The decision did not elicit an outpouring of response from most Republican members of Congress. That reflects the precarious situation it puts many in the GOP in as the ruling is seen as a victory for the pro-gun community despite overturning a Trump-era ban.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie is a Kentucky Republican who has antagonized Trump and who supported Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis failed bid for the White House. On Friday, he posted on X that Congress makes the laws, not the administrative branch and then wrote the top court had invalidated Trumps bump-stock ban. Other Republican federal lawmakers simply called it an unconstitutional ban but did not mention Trump.

The decision on Friday may gain more attention in the key Western battleground state of Nevada, where in 2017 a high-stakes gambler killed 60 people before killing himself, leaving his exact motive a mystery.

A Nevada state lawmaker who was among the 22,000 concertgoers who fled the barrage of bullets in Las Vegas in October 2017 said that No community has felt the devastating impact of bump stocks more than Nevadans.

Now more than ever, it is important to elect Democrats up and down the ballot to ensure we keep our communities safe from the epidemic of gun violence and prevent soulless, morally corrupt, and bankrupt MAGA Republicans beholden to the gun lobby from being in charge of the public safety of our communities, said assemblywoman Sandra Jauregui, a Democrat.

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Farnoush Amiri and Scott Sonner contributed to this report.

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Trump defied the NRA to ban bump stocks, now says he 'did nothing' to restrict guns - FOX 29

The Supreme Courts decision overturning the Trump-era ban on so-called bump stocks reflects an understanding of the mechanics not just of gunsmithing but also the Constitution. It is the latest step by the high court to restore the Second Amendment as a first-class article in the Bill of Rights. It will be decried by the left, particularly because the vote within the court was on ideological lines, but it bodes well for the rule of law.

All Americans were horrified at the massacre that in 2017 took the lives of 58 and wounded hundreds at Las Vegas. The slaughter was perpetrated by a man using firearms equipped with bump stocks. These accessories enable a gun to fire numerous bullets with a single pull of the trigger provided that the shooter maintains forward pressure on the rifles front grip with his non-trigger hand, Justice Clarence Thomas observes in the high courts majority opinion.

This tragedy, Justice Thomas adds, created tremendous political pressure to outlaw bump stocks nationwide. Yet before any legislation could emerge from Congress, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives took it upon itself to ban the devices. The agencys argument was that bump stocks transform a semi-automatic rifle into a de facto machinegun. Such weapons are banned under the National Firearms Act of 1934.

That law defines a machinegun as a weapon that, with a single function of the trigger, fires automatically more than one shot. The six justices in the majority found that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock is actually not a machinegun, though, because it cannot fire more than one shot with just a single function of the trigger. Even if it could, Justice Thomas notes, it would not happen automatically.

Under this close analysis of the workings of rifles equipped with bump stocks in an opinion that even includes diagrammatic illustrations of the applicable components of the firearms in question Justice Thomas concludes that ATF exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a Rule that classifies bump stocks as machineguns. As Justice Samuel Alito notes in a concurring opinion, the statutory text is clear, and we must follow it.

It might be tempting to view this dispute as a straightforward example of regulatory overreach by a federal agency, an all too common feature of the administrative state that seeks to impose the will of bureaucrats on Americanss lives. Yet the Second Amendment the palladium* of our liberty stands as a subtext in this case. The gravity of the right to bear arms makes it all the more egregious to infringe it via an unjustifiable regulation.

That understanding animates Justice Alitos observation that an event that highlights the need to amend a law, a reference to the Las Vegas shooting, does not itself change the laws meaning. By contrast, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent, warns that todays ruling will have deadly consequences. She accuses the majority of misinterpreting the law passed in 1934, and says the ruling enables gun users and manufacturers to circumvent federal law.

For years, though, ATF denied that it had any legal authority to regulate bump stocks, Justice Thomas explains. That is why, he adds, liberals like Senator Feinstein groused that it was a mistake for the ATF to ban bump stocks. The regulation hinges on a dubious analysis, she said in 2018, claiming that bumping the trigger is not the same as pulling it. Feinstein called for Congress, not regulators, to act on the matter.

The late senators view is echoed by Justice Alito in his concurrence. There is a simple remedy for the disparate treatment of bump stocks and machineguns, he writes. Congress can amend the law, he adds, and might have already if ATF had stuck with its earlier interpretation. The Nines ruling today is a reminder that the right to bear arms, like the other liberties vouchsafed in the Constitution, cannot be so casually bumped aside by federal regulators.

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* The phrase used for the Second Amendment by Judge St. George Tucker and, later, by Justice Joseph Story.

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The Rational Ruling on Bump Stocks - The New York Sun

Since the minute it was ratified, the First Amendment has been as clear as water on one thing: Government officials may not use their power to punish or abridge political viewpoints.

Thats the whole point of the speech part of the amendment.

Because power-hungry functionaries keep refusing to abide by that bright-line rule, the Supreme Court periodically steps in to remind us. Thats what it did on May 30 in National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo, when all nine justices ruled that Maria Vullo, former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, improperly pressured insurance companies and banks to deny the NRA access to their services.

The case wasnt complicated. Vullo found a minor infraction in insurance that Lloyds of London and Chubb Limited had underwritten, through which the NRA provided its members access to insurance. Vullo then told Lloyds officials she wouldnt penalize the company if it agreed to stop underwriting all firearm-related policies and substantially scaled back its NRA business.

Then, in a guidance letter to all entities regulated by her department, Vullo specifically discouraged them from doing business with the NRA and to consider reputational risks involved in doing so. In a joint press release with then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Vullo went even further, urging all insurance companies and banks doing business in New York to discontinue their arrangement with the NRA. Vullos department entered consent decrees with Lloyds and Chubb in which the latter agreed to not provide insurance through the NRA, even if otherwise lawful.

Vullo also made clear to Lloyds that she wanted to hobble all gun groups, and that (to quote the case syllabus) she would focus her enforcement actions solely on the syndicates with ties to the NRA, and ignore other syndicates writing similar policies.'

Vullos actions were obviously coercive. If all the facts as presented in this case are found to be accurate when the case goes back to lower courts, then Vullo used the power of her office to target gun promotion by going after the NRAs business partners.

All nine justices rightly considered this case not according to their like or dislike of the NRA, but as a matter of First Amendment protection. The unanimous decision was written by left-leaning Justice Sonia Sotomayor, even though her jurisprudence consistently approves of gun control. The unanimity indicates how strong a First Amendment case this was, and of how important that amendment is.

As Sotomayor noted, Vullo in her private capacity is free to use her First Amendment rights to speak against the NRAs agenda. But the Constitution insists that Vullo not wield her power to punish or suppress the NRAs First Amendment rights.

At the heart of the First Amendments Free Speech Clause, Sotomayor wrote, is the recognition that viewpoint discrimination is uniquely harmful to a free and democratic society.

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This lesson should be learned, and the amendments letter observed, not just by direct government regulators and enforcement officials. Government entities such as public schools and state colleges, too, must be bastions of free speech. A state college dean or professor no less than a state financial services regulator must not use viewpoint discrimination to penalize speech (other than illegal physical threats) or to determine employment status. In particular, it is manifestly unconstitutional to deny employment or promotion to an instructor who refuses to sign a diversity, equity, and inclusion statement of beliefs.

Our free and democratic society is a treasure. The high court is right to keep officials from gunning it down.

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Theres a First Amendment right to express Second Amendment views - Washington Examiner

The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) scored a historic legal victory May 29 in one of the most closely followed First Amendment cases in the nation.

In a stinging rebuke of New Yorks blacklisting campaign against the NRA, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled for the NRA in its case against former New York State Department of Financial Services Superintendent Maria T. Vullo. The decision remands the NRAs case to the lower court reviving the NRAs claims that Vullo, at the behest of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, violated the NRAs First Amendment rights when she urged banks and insurers to cut ties with the NRA in 2018.

This victory is a win for the NRA in the fight to protect freedom, says NRA President Bob Barr. This is a historic moment for the NRA in its stand against governmental overreach. Let this be clear: the voice of the NRA membership is as loud and influential as ever. Regulators are now on notice: this is a win for not only the NRA, but every organization who might otherwise suffer from an abuse of government power.

The case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on March 18, 2024. The case is one of the most high-profile First Amendment cases in recent memory, with dozens of legal experts and constitutional scholars, including the ACLU, siding with the NRA.

This is a moment of truth, says NRA EVP & CEO Doug Hamlin. The decision underscores the importance of this principled fight. When it comes to defending our members and their freedoms, the NRA will never back down.

The opinion of the court, written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, states, Six decades ago, this Court held that a government entitys threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion against a third party to achieve the suppression of disfavored speech violates the First Amendment. Today, the court reaffirms what it said then: Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors. Petitioner National Rifle Association (NRA) plausibly alleges that respondent Maria Vullo did just that.

This is a landmark victory for the NRA and all who care about our First Amendment freedom, says William A. Brewer III, counsel to the NRA. The opinion confirms what the NRA has known all along: New York government officials abused the power of their office to silence a political enemy. This is a victory for the NRAs millions of members and the freedoms that define America.

In the opinion, Justice Sotomayor writes that Vullo was free to criticize the NRA but could not wield her power, however, to threaten enforcement actions against DFS-regulated entities in order to punish or suppress the NRAs gun-promotion advocacy.

Justice Sotomayor continues, One can reasonably infer from the complaint that Vullo coerced DFS-regulated entities to cut their ties with the NRA in order to stifle the NRAs gun-promotion advocacy and advance her views on gun control.

In a May 2018 lawsuit, the NRA alleged that Vullo, at the urging of Governor Cuomo, took aim at the NRA and conspired to use DFS regulatory power to financially blacklist the NRA coercing banks and insurers to cut ties with the Association to suppress its pro-Second Amendment speech. The NRA argues that Vullos actions were meant to silence the NRA using guidance letters, backroom threats, and other measures to cause financial institutions to drop the Association. The NRA's First Amendment claims withstood multiple motions to dismiss. But in 2022, after Vullo appealed the trial courts ruling, the Second Circuit struck down the NRAs claims. The court ruled that in an era of enhanced corporate social responsibility, it was reasonable for New York's financial regulator to warn banks and insurance companies against servicing pro-gun groups based on the supposed social backlash against those groups advocacy. The court also ruled that Vullos guidance written on her official letterhead and invoking her regulatory powers was not a directive to the institutions she regulated, but rather a mere expression of her political preferences.

On Feb. 7, 2023, the NRA petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking review of the Second Circuit decision. On Nov. 3, 2023, the court granted review of the case.

Twenty-two amicus briefs representing more than 190 individuals and organizations were filed in support of the NRAs position, including a filing by several of the nations foremost First Amendment scholars. The amicus briefs also included a joint filing by dozens of congressional Republicans and filings by 25 state attorneys general. The support came from across the political spectrum.

On March 18, 2024, the court heard oral arguments in the case. ACLU National Legal Director and NRA counsel David Cole argued that Vullo and other New York officials abused their authority in violation of the First Amendment, telling the justices: There's no question on this record that they encouraged people to punish the NRA. Cole said, It was a campaign by the states highest political officials to use their power to coerce a boycott of a political advocacy organization because they disagreed with its advocacy.

Eugene Volokh joined Brewer and the ACLU in representing the NRA, along with Brewer partners Sarah B. Rogers and Noah Peters.

2024 National Rifle Association of America, Institute for Legislative Action. This may be reproduced. This may not be reproduced for commercial purposes.

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SCOTUS unanimous for NRA in First Amendment battle - Buckeye Firearms Association

John Zmirak, one of the most powerful and inspiring conservative writers of this era, has published another book, No Second Amendment, No First: God, Guns, and the Government. The Yale-educated journalist and former college professor shows how gun control efforts are misguided, damaging and incompatible with church teaching, in contrast to the right to keep and bear arms, which flows from the very heart of Biblical faith and reason.

The ambitious book digs deeply into the history of the Christian church, American history and its precursors in ancient history where the Founding Fathers got their principles. The right to keep and bear arms comes from natural law.

Zmirak dedicated it to three people who lost their lives after around 2020 due to the lefts anarcho-tyranny: Jake Gardner, Ashli Babbitt and Rosanne Boyland. It begins with a quote by former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard explaining why she had to leave the Democratic Party.

Bestselling author and talk show host Eric Metaxas provided a foreword, where he relayed how he attended Yale when Zmirak did, but was warned by progressives to stay away from the conservative Christian fascist. After becoming miserable listening to his friends advice and views in the college full of elitists, he became a Christian, which changed his political views.

In his introduction, Zmirak stated, The most effective practical tool these elites are using is a weaponized perversion of the concept of public health. He cited New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham declaring a public health emergency last September in order to suspend laws that allow open and concealed carry of firearms in Albuquerque for 30 days. He pointed at the abuse Kyle Rittenhouse and Gardner endured through the legal system for defending themselves with guns from progressive rioters. The Iraq War veteran killed himself after realizing he could end up spending the rest of his life in prison. Zmirak dedicated a heartbreaking epilogue to him.

Zmirak said three legal scholars concluded after an in-depth study, The historical record shows that, almost without exception, genocide is preceded by a very careful government program that disarms the future victims. He went over the danger of Red Flag laws, where the burden of proof is wrongly placed on the gun owner.

The first part of the book explores the degeneration of the Judeo-Christian worldview that made possible the founding of a self-governing, free republic such as the United States of America.

Instead, we now see ourselves and our neighbors as termites in a hive dependent on top-down management and constant protection by our betters.

The second part of the book offers solutions, and the third part goes over the historical background of how the biblical view of man helped create (unique to the West) a philosophy of freedom.

He derisively observed that journalists, leftist flaks, and massively funded anti-gun activists might as well have a template on their computers, so interchangeable do the statements seem whenever a mass shooting occurs. They act like there is an awakening of common sense in the face of an epidemic of gun violence.

Zmirak denounced the sold-out churches; the mainline Protestant religious congregations that issue a long list of Woke buzzwords after mass shootings. Cleverly, he crafted his own draft statement that churches should issue instead, which emphasizes the victims and how to stop the societal problems that create dangerous killers, instead of focusing on gun violence.

He discussed the history of Christianity in the U.S., and how the state began replacing God as the source of salvation including as the source of defending yourself. He said the last great Christian moment was the Civil Rights movement.

The book is full of the classic lines Zmirak is known for, like this one regarding wokism: Go deeper into the cult and the disciplines get more rigorous. In reference to the Second Amendment, he sarcastically said, Aristocrats warn the commoners that we are unworthy of the liberties our forefathers deeded us, so the government must control all the weapons so we sheep may safely graze.

He derisively referred to a brilliant piece of marketing by Black Lives Matter, which was weaponizing a perfectly legitimate biblical sentiment in service of a Marxist sect of street thugs and corporate shakedown experts. It didnt work. The rate of homicides with black victims increased 53% since the protests after the death of George Floyd, Zmirak said.

Florida State University criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz estimated that defensive use of guns, which includes merely brandishing one, occurs by Americans between 2.2 million to 2.5 million times each year.

Zmirak recommended legal scholar David Kopels book, The Morality of Self-Defense and Military Action: The Judeo-Christian Tradition, for more information on Jewish scriptural support for the Second Amendment. Kopel cited Exodus 22:2, which states, If a thief is found breaking in, and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no bloodguilt for him; but if the sun has risen upon him, there shall be bloodguilt for him.

Zmirak denounced weak pastors in Hitlers Germany who used Romans 13 to justify capitulating to the Nazis. While the Apostle Paul said Christians must be subject to the governing authorities, Zmirak clarified, If your reading of a Bible verse leads to outrageous consequences that violate Natural Law or vitiate the Old Testament, or that seem to condemn the behavior of many saints . . . then you are indeed reading it wrong.

Zmirak provided a fascinating account of The Crusades, pointing out that the atrocities were committed by disorganized bands of commoners who attached themselves to the crusaders, attacking others [a]gainst the explicit orders of local bishops and Christian nobles.

Zmirak didnt just cover the Second Amendment, but related topics to provide context.

The book is full of so many fascinating, little known historical facts and spot-on analysis that it is a must read in order to understand our history and how we got to where we are today.

This piece originally appeared at Townhall.com. Reprinted with the authors permission.

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How the Second Amendment Came From Our Biblical Heritage - The Stream