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Continuing his push to protect hunter safety and Montanans Second Amendment rights, U.S. Senator Jon Tester today spoke with outdoor industry leaders and hunters in Billings to discuss his bipartisan law that requires the Department of Education to restore school districts ability to use federal resources for school archery, gun safety, and hunter education programs.

In Montana, safe and responsible hunting is a part of our outdoor heritage and Ill stand up to anyone who tries to get in the way of that,said Tester.When the Department of Education came out with this decision, folks in Billings and across Montana spoke up, and together we were able to get my bipartisan bill swiftly signed into law that will protect hunter safety courses and our Second Amendment rights for generations to come. Montanans sent me to the Senate to stand up for our rural way of life, and I wont let any unelected D.C. bureaucrat threaten our outdoor traditions.

Hunters ed is something thats woven into the fabric of who we are as a people,said Jake Schwaller, Montana Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Board Member. As we have an influx of new people coming into our state to become part of this community, the ability to educate them and bring them up to speed on this long heritage that we hold is so important and our public schools are the place that we do that. Keeping the federal funding available is so crucially important So with a full heart from our 3000 dues-paying members and every hunter in Montana, thank you Senator.

Ive been hunting with my dad ever since I was five years old, and I completed hunters safety when I was twelve. I shot my first deer when I was twelve and that was only because of hunter safety,said Even Trewhalla, a young Billings hunter who has completed Montana hunter safety courses. I want to say thank you Senator Tester for advocating for hunter safety.

As part of his efforts to protect Montanans Second Amendment rights, Tester led the charge to push back against the Biden Administrations initial decision to strip funding from these longstanding safety classes. Tester quickly expressed his concerns to the Biden Administration in an Augustletter to theDepartment of Education. Tester then filed hisDefending Hunters Education Actand worked tosecure the bipartisan supportof Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine), John Boozman (R-Arkansas), Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) and Mike Braun (R-Indiana). Senator Testers bipartisan bill was endorsed by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Boone & Crockett Club, National Wildlife Federation, Congressional Sportsmens Foundation, and Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

To drum up additional support for his bipartisan bill, Testerpenned a columnin Montana state-wide newspapers arguing that the Biden Administration had made a poor decision that will hurt thousands of students who benefit from these resources every year.

Tester thenspoke on the Senate floorahead of the final passage of his bipartisan bill and urged his colleagues to join him to defend Montanas way of life.

President Bidensigned Testers bipartisan bill into lawon October 6th, 2023.

As a proud gun-owner and strong supporter of the Second Amendment, Tester has repeatedly opposed banning assault weapons and will always protect the rights of law-abiding Montana gun owners.

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PHOTO RELEASE: In Billings, Tester Talks Impacts of his Law to ... - Jon Tester

The Center for the Study of Guns and Society at Wesleyan brought together historians, museum curators, legal scholars, journalists, filmmakers, and other subject-matter experts for the Centers second-annual flagship conference, Current Perspectives on the History of Guns and Society, which took place October 13-14. Through panel discussions, a film screening, and other sessions, the conference shed fresh light on the ever-expanding role of history in Americas contemporary gun discourse.

[See photos from the event.]

How have the uses and meanings of guns changed over time? asked Jennifer Tucker, professor of history and the Centers founding director. How does historical knowledge inform how we grapple with questions about firearms in society, culture, and courts of law? Today, as never before, there is a great contemporary demand for this kind of rigorous historical analysis.

Wesleyans Center for the Study of Guns and Society is doing unique and vital work to enrich our national conversation on firearms. The Centers annual conference connects experts from a huge range of backgrounds so we can learn from one another, said Brian DeLay, the Preston Hotchkis Chair in the History of the United States in UC Berkeleys History Department.

The history of firearms use, regulation, and place in American culture is a largely neglected academic subject. Yet since the Supreme Court handed down its watershed NYSRPA v. Bruen decision in 2022and, in effect, began requiring modern-day firearms restrictions to have regulatory counterparts in early American historyprofessional historians have become increasingly common in courtrooms that hear Second Amendment cases. On a panel entitled Use and Abuse of History in Second Amendment Litigation, historians spoke of logging seven-day workweeks in the wake of the Bruen decision, applying their expertise in cases pertaining to high-capacity firearm magazines, self-assembled weapons colloquially known as ghost guns, and other present-day issues without easy precedents.

The way that I have tried to approach it as an expert witness and a historian, instead of just trying to answer the basic questionwhats an analogous law to firearms on a subway?is to step back and ask a broader question and try to show the court the change over time thats happened, said Brennan Gardner Rivas, a historian and independent scholar. That context can make a big difference in sorting out some of the arguments that are just silly.

In another session moderated by CNNs Richard Galant, a panel of working journalists drew on their own experiences to share the global resonance of Americas relationship with guns as well as the ways in which reporters approach covering gun violence, from conveying its public health dimensions to weighing whether to publish images of its consequences.

Theres a deep, deep problem in gun culture in the United States that has little to do with law-abiding gun owners, said Mike McIntire, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The New York Times (and an avowed gun owner), who in 2013 co-authored a series of investigative stories on gun violence in America. It gets into a whole milieu of overlapping thingsnot just ideology but also the psychology behind why people desire certain kinds of guns to begin with, the marketing, the commercial aspects of it. In some ways, its kind of this unholy merging of the free market and politics and ideology.

As in the Centers 2022 inaugural conference, this years event examined firearms from a range of atypical angles, from the intentional design behind firearms exhibits in museums, to a deeper exploration of the role of faith in firearms history, to a screening of the 2023 film Good Guy with a Gun.

Discussions at the conference covered a variety of subjects related to guns in U.S. history from the colonial era to the present, including presentations by 15 eminent historians. For example, Jonathan Obert (Amherst) spoke on the markets and manufacture of 19th century small arms; Antwain Hunter (UNC Chapel Hill) discussed firearms, race and community in antebellum North Carolina; and Lindsay Schakenbach Regele (Miami University) explored some of the myths and realities of guns and westward expansion.

In another session, historians Jessica Dawson (West Point), Michael Grigoni (Wake Forest), and Jenny Legath (Princeton)all of whom are doing cutting-edge research on how religious identities shape individuals relationship with firearmsprovided much-needed historical and sociological context. I did not realize the degree to which the NRA utilized religious rhetoric to reshape its advocacy of firearms in the latter half of the 20thcentury, said Joseph Slaughter, assistant professor of history and associate director of the Center for the Study of Guns and Society.

Historian Caroline Light (Harvard), whose research has traced the entwinement of the nations ideals of armed citizenship and concepts of race and gender, and Brian DeLay (UC Berkeley), a leading historian of the U.S. arms trade, presented research on the historical record of guns in 19th and 20th century U.S. history and law.

The conference also offered a glimpse of firearms-focused research underway at Wesleyan. Maryam Gooyabadi, assistant professor of the practice in quantitative analysis, detailed a range of firearms data analysis projects at the Hazel Quantitative Analysis Center (QAC) in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Guns and Society. Projects include analyzing representations of firearms in media; marshalling data from different federal agencies to explore the factors influencing gun deaths; and tracking technological advances in firearms by examining patent records.

The conference closed with a roundtable discussion on current and future initiatives with presenters and attendees, including presentations by epidemiologist Matthew Miller (Northeastern/Harvards Firearm Injury Prevention Center) on current public health research relating to the effects of extreme risk protection orders, and historian Renee Romano (Oberlin), on a new effort to activate exhibits to address gun violence.

As the Centers most recent conference showed, our reckoning with firearms is as old as the Republic and as recent as todays front page. I dont think we need to wait for some sort of far-out moment in the future where you can look back into the mists of time to understand whats going on, said McIntire, the Times reporter. Its happening to us right now.

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Center for the Study of Guns and Society Explores History's Growing ... - Wesleyan University

By Erik Wasson, Billy House and Steven T. Dennis Bloomberg

House Republicans have dispensed with Jim Jordan as their nominee for the U.S. speakership and now several more are preparing to enter the fray.

The new field began to take shape minutes after the party voted by secret ballot to rescind Trump loyalist Jim Jordans nomination to the leadership post.

Republicans plan to hold another candidate forum on Monday, allowing candidates time over the weekend to mount their campaigns, interim speaker Patrick McHenry said. Another nomination vote would be held as early as Tuesday.

Here are some of the lawmakers expected to try to claim the nomination:

Emmer, the partys third-ranking official, has begun making calls for a speaker bid, according to person familiar with the calls.

He has had a tense relations with some Donald Trump supporters, in part because he voted to certify Joe Bidens 2020 election victory. There also had been some criticism of him for leading the House GOP political arm in 2022, when the party picked up the majority, but a narrower one than expected.

The Oklahoma Republican has been waiting in the wings since former speaker Kevin McCarthys Oct. 3 ouster. He said Friday he would seek the speakership.

Hern, who chairs the 176-member Republican Study Committee, could win over some moderates as a more centrist alternative to Jordan, whose strong-arm tactics have backfired on moderates and more traditional Republicans.

The Florida Republican is a Trump acolyte and member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus who has served as a surrogate for the former president on the campaign trail. He has described himself as a Trump supporting, liberty loving, pro-life, pro-Second Amendment Black man, and a person who will bring the fight to the swamp creatures.

Donalds forged a plan to keep the government open while cutting domestic spending, which more conservative members rejected.

A spokesman confirmed Friday he is running for speaker.

The House Budget chairman says hes seriously considering a run next week. Even before Jordans nomination was pulled, Arrington was calling colleagues to gauge his support in the fractious party, a Republican official said.

Arrington, who first came to Congress in 2017, has advocated deep cuts in federal spending to bring down budget deficits by $16 trillion over 10 years. Moderates have opposed his proposal and may be reluctant to back him as speaker.

Johnson, a former RSC chairman and a current member of the House GOP leadership team, is making calls to lawmakers about a potential bid, a spokeswoman confirmed.

The Louisiana Republican is a stalwart social conservative and member of Republican leadership team with a reputation for collegiality. He authored a Commitment to Civility pledge when he arrived at the Capitol in 2017 that was also signed by other incoming lawmakers.

The Georgia Republican surprised lawmakers last week when he challenged Jordan for the nomination, receiving 81 votes.

Scott, who served as class president for the Tea Party wave of Republicans elected in 2010, has moderated in approach during his career. He defied Trump when he voted to certify the results of the 2020 election. Scott challenged Jordan for the Republican nomination and said immediately after Jordans nomination was rescinded that he would run again for the job.

The Pennsylvania Republican, who first came to Congress in 2019, told reporters hes weighing a run.

Meuser has styled himself as a small-government congressman with the interest of taxpayers first and foremost, and hes used his experience overseeing Pennsylvanias tax system to push for reduced spending.

The Michigan Republican is a former Marine Corps three-star general and the highest-ranking combat veteran elected to Congress. Bergman, who first came to Congress in 2017, announced his interest in the speakers job earlier this week.

With assistance from Mackenzie Hawkins, Jonathan Tamari and Maeve Sheehey.

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A new field of would-be U.S. House speakers takes shape after Jim ... - The Spokesman Review

Nonetheless, the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have apparently concluded that the Second Amendment does not apply to the people in its broadest sense as written, but only to law-abiding people. Alito came perhaps the closest to explaining the difference in his concurring opinion in Bruen. While the dissent seemingly thinks that the ubiquity of guns and our countrys high level of gun violence provide reasons for sustaining the New York law, the dissent appears not to understand that it is these very facts that cause law-abiding citizens to feel the need to carry a gun for self-defense, he explained, referring to Breyers dissent.

Alito then went on to describe how law-abiding citizens interact with and can be distinguished from criminals in more detail. No one apparently knows how many of the 400 million privately held guns are in the hands of criminals, but there can be little doubt that many muggers and rapists are armed and are undeterred by the Sullivan Law, he wrote, referring to the New York statute at the heart of the case. Each year, the [NYPD] confiscates thousands of guns, and it is fair to assume that the number of guns seized is a fraction of the total number held unlawfully. He went on to state, citing statistics and anecdotes alike, that ordinary citizens frequently use firearms to protect themselves from criminal attack.

Some of this is a bit obvious. A mugger carrying a gun is not law-abiding; a person defending themselves from a mugger is law-abiding. But Alitos reference to the NYPDs confiscation of guns held unlawfully is where things break down a bit. The whole point of the legal challenge in Bruen was that otherwise law-abiding New Yorkers who lacked concealed-carry permits could not go to certain places in New York City with their guns without facing arrest and seizure. According to the friend-of-the-court briefs filed in Bruen, more than a few people whose guns were seized by the NYPD in recent years intended to use them for self-defense, or at the very least did not intend to use them to commit a crime. Criminality, in other words, is more than just whatever a state decides to criminalize.

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Why Does the Second Amendment Only Apply to Law-Abiding Gun Owners? - The New Republic

(The Center Square) A constitutional challenge to Illinois gun and magazine ban is under advisement at the Illinois Supreme Court.

Illinois bans the sale and possession of more than 170 semi-automatic firearms and certain magazines. If the law is sustained, those with such firearms owned before the law was enacted must register the weapons under criminal penalty by Jan. 1. The law is being challenged in federal and state courts.

Tuesday at the Illinois Supreme Court in Springfield, justices heard oral arguments in the case Caulkins v. Pritzker. The case comes out of Macon County where state Rep. Dan Caulkins, R-Decatur, and others allege, among other things, the law violates equal protections because it does not apply to active and retired police officers and others in law enforcement and security fields.

Justice Elizabeth Rochford asked Caulkins attorney Jerry Stocks about the training exemption law enforcement officers have.

And that they continue to maintain that training while they maintain their exempt status as opposed to just everyone else, Rochford said. Is that an arbitrary

It is arbitrary, Stocks said.

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Stocks said retired military who have training arent exempt. Other justices asked whether this is a Second Amendment challenge or an equal protections challenge.

You cannot even begin to address the grounds that are in this complaint without addressing and finding what the Second Amendment says in this case, Stocks said during the hearing.

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The court took the issue under consideration and could rule in the months ahead. The states ban also faces challenges in federal court with several cases consolidated at the appeals court level and a motion for emergency injunction pending in front of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Defending the state, Attorney General Kwame Raoul said he was confident the ban is constitutional after the Illinois Supreme Court hearing, especially with continued news of recent mass shootings. Raoul was asked about similar training the public could take.

Well, you play a different role, right, Raoul said. Its not just a question of training, youre not in a law enforcement role, I dont think.

Raoul criticized the plaintiffs for not arguing the Second Amendment in their pleadings but raised it in the court.

Stocks reiterated his claim the law violates equal protections of civil liberties.

This was about the fundamental individual right under the Second Amendment that could not be diluted by Illinois version of the Second Amendment, Stocks said after the hearing.

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Illinois justices hear 2nd Amendment, equal protections arguments against states gun ban - The Center Square