Those of us in the firearm industry are frustrated and vexed over the Court’s decision to not address the question of hardware bans head-on. Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch all dissented from the Court’s decision to decline to take up Snope or Ocean State.
On the Court’s logic, ATF could at any time declare AR–15s to be machineguns prohibited by federal law. Until we resolve whether the 2A forecloses that, law-abiding AR–15 owners must rely on the goodwill of a federal agency to retain their means of self-defense.
Marx likely would have supported the peoples’ right to bear arms—right up until the point it no longer served his revolutionary purpose, at which point his support for gun rights would be jettisoned. And this is precisely what his followers did.
ATF has credited President Trump’s Feb. 7, 2025, executive order Protecting Second Amendment Rights as the basis for terminating zero tolerance, implementing a fairer enforcement policy, and reexamining the prior adverse licensing actions.
You can see it on display—or, rather, you can’t—when you visit Crown Heights: Every store, more or less, has a little notice in the window informing you that if you’ve got a piece and a permit, you’re very welcome to walk right in.
The SNL writers likely intended the bit as an indictment of the Founders being so deluded as to put the right to keep and bear arms directly after free speech in importance when they imagined the contributions of ‘Matt,’ a colonial era good ol’ boy.
Anti-gun governments are willing to take any means necessary – including violating someone’s First Amendment rights – to discourage the exercise of Second Amendment rights.
To say a committed and involved DOJ could be a force multiplier in the project to uphold the 2A would be an understatement. It could be a gamechanger and could give recalcitrant anti-gun states – used to acting with virtual impunity – a reason to curb their prohibitionist ambitions.
Jaquan Bridges, who pleaded guilty to the offense after a 2023 shootout with police, was arrested with a Glock .40 caliber pistol with an attachment that converted the handgun into a machine gun, but fought to dismiss the charge on constitutional grounds.
None of this is new to the firearm industry. For decades, it’s been caught in that ongoing tension between those who write the laws, those who enforce the laws, and those who decide if those laws are aligned with the U.S. Constitution.
