NSSF Asks FTC to Disclose Extent to Which it Colluded With the Gun Control Industry to Limit Gun Makers’ Commercial Speech During Biden Years

Much the same as the Biden administration weaponized the federal government’s power against speech it didn’t like or that opposed its agenda, the Bidenoids also took a “whole of government” approach to rolling back Americans’ Second Amendment rights, too. Part of that effort involved pressure brought against gun companies regarding their product advertising, sort of  hybrid violation of both speech and gun rights.

While Trump 2.0 has done a lot to undo much of the government side of the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex since it took office in January, we still don’t have anything approaching a full accounting of what took place prior to January 20. One aspect of the prior administration’s war on guns was pressure that was brought by NGOs — read: gun control operations — via the Federal Trade Commission to investigate and pressure gun makers as to their product advertisements and claims.

In other words, gun makers’ protected commercial speech was restricted as a result of a coordinated lawfare campaign waged by the gun control industry with the willing help of the Biden executive branch regulatory apparatus.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation is now asking the FTC, as part of Trump’s Protecting Second Amendment Rights executive order, to look into the extent to which it enabled these attacks on protected speech by colluding with anti-gun orgs.

Here’s the NSSF’s announcement of the request . . .

NSSF, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Chairman Andrew Ferguson urging the FTC to support President Donald Trump’s Executive Order Protecting Second Amendment Rights by conducting a thorough review of relationships and activities by the Biden FTC with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that propagated “whole of government” infringements on Second Amendment rights.

Gun control groups were welcomed to the Biden White House, including through the now-defunct White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, that built a reciprocal relationship to attack Second Amendment rights and the firearm industry that makes exercising those rights possible. As part of a coordinated “lawfare” campaign, gun control NGOs aligned with the Biden administration coordinated to publish a series of misleading “complaints” urging the FTC to investigate and a take legal action against truthful and constitutionally-protected firearm advertising.

“Countering President Biden’s ‘whole of government’ effort to infringe the Second Amendment necessitates a whole of government response by this administration,” wrote Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel, to Chairman Ferguson. “Likewise, the particular focus from the Biden Administration and NGOs on co-opting the Biden-era FTC for their unconstitutional agenda, necessitates decisive action from the current Commission.”

Specifically, NSSF urged the FTC to take the following actions to implement President Trump’s Executive Order:

• • Issue a statement publicly reaffirming the Commission’s commitment to protecting Second Amendment rights, consistent with the Executive Order;
  • Review actions during the last administration to determine the full nature and extent of the pressure exerted by the Biden White House on former commissioners and staff to infringe Second Amendment rights;
  • Review actions during the last administration by former commissioners and staff to determine whether they improperly aligned themselves with anti-Second Amendment NGOs, utilized Commission resources to aid those groups, or otherwise engaged in conduct that infringed the Second Amendment;
  • Refer any relevant findings to the Attorney General; and
  • Promote full public transparency of the foregoing by making public the results of the Commission’s inquiry.

NSSF detailed the Biden administration’s abuses of government authority to enrich and empower gun control organizations aligned with the former administration’s antigun efforts. Those included wielding the FTC as one lever of governmental power to silence constitutionally-protected free speech through advertising, lucrative and dubious gun control fundraising campaigns, and misleading and deceptive legal claims against firearm manufacturers.

Read the full letter here.