Since the late 90s, the Gun Prohibition movement has been increasingly desperate. They’ve lost so many legislative and legal battles. But they’ve never given up.
States have successfully implemented and expanded lawful carry and other legal protections for those who use a firearm in self-defense. And these laws have worked well! Left-statists are reduced to a package of lies that they call “common sense gun reform.” Even their labeling is purposely misleading.
The record is not perfect, but gun rights have made significant progress in the legislatures and the courts. But the executive branches, especially federal levels, have tried creative ways to attack gun owners themselves. They’ve waged this war on two fronts…
- They’ve tried to make the tools of self-defense vastly more expensive to acquire.
- They’ve targeted individual gun owners and taken away their personal rights.
Gun owners adapted to the former. Despite policy-induced ammunition shortages, where the price of a round skyrocketed, gun owners continued to buy and buy, then buy some more — if they were lucky enough to find the desired caliber. As a result, there are far more rounds of ammunition, not to mention firearms in the hands of American citizens than ever in U.S. history.
Now, the Gun Prohibitionists want to interrupt gun sales. They want to prevent you from selling your sister-in-law a pistol. Their sleight-of-mouth description of this activity is the “gun show loophole.” Plus…
They want to prevent everyone who has been placed on the “No Fly List,” from acquiring a firearm. Nevermind that you don’t need to be even suspected, let alone charged with a crime. They want you to ignore the fact that there’s no legal process to get removed from this secret list, which is written up and managed by unelected bureaucrats.
And here’s another one of their tricks…
They’ve worked hard to make loss of gun ownership rights a criminal penalty for nonviolent and even mundane things.
After bringing this issue to the attention of Zero Aggression Project newsletter subscribers, a veterinarian wrote us. Listen to this and feel his pain…
Due to a tax dispute, with the IRS, he was convicted of a nonviolent felony. He served time and was fined. He previously had a carry license. But he lost his rights to possess a firearm. He cannot even hunt or skeet shoot, both activities he previously enjoyed.
Worse others, who lived with him, lost their right to have an accessible firearm in his house — despite being innocent of any “crime.”
Do you get that? The “law” is being used like a bowling ball, and this healer, who has hurt no one, is the lead pin. But the patient and plodding Gun Prohibitionists get a Strike! by making his infraction bowl over the rights of everyone in his household.
The statists keep criminalizing, well, anything. With each Strike!, more Americans lose their gun rights for nonviolent offenses — perhaps even if they committed no crime.
Now, we can make a difference in this matter, in a place where our attorneys have won before. There’s a case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. It’s called Hamilton v. Pallozzi. Here are the details…
James Hamilton committed a real crime. He asked someone to take a credit card that he knew was stolen and buy something for him with that card. That was wrong. The judge had harsh words for him, when he was convicted.
After serving his sentence, he went on to have a family, hold down a job, and become a valued member of his community. He went back to the state court system, where he was convicted, and sought to have his rights restored. The state where he convicted was Virginia. The Governor pardoned him and restored his political rights. Then, the Virginia courts restored his right to own a firearm. The federal government agrees with Virginia under the Firearm Owners Protection Act.
And thanks to the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution, his present state of Maryland should agree. This Clause instructs states to respect the “public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.” The Supreme Court has since ruled that judicial judgments by states are entitled to significant respect.
But Maryland is one of the more Gun Prohibitionist states in the nation. They’ve decided to be their own law. They’ve denied Mr. Hamilton the right to own a gun, despite the state of his conviction fully restoring Hamilton’s right to own a gun.
Do you support this war on gun ownership or do you oppose it?
We gun rights advocates have made great strides in the federal courts in recent years. And I’m going to brag for our attorneys at William J. Olson, PC. In both the Heller and McDonald cases, the Olson team’s briefs played a significant role. They brought information and arguments to the courts that the counsel for those cases did not. The arguments impacted the decisions. In fact, during a recent gun rights hearing, Justice Thomas spoke up for the first time in a decade. What caused him to break his usual silence? An argument found only in the amicus brief by the Olson firm.
There’s every reason to believe an Olson brief will be valuable to Hamilton too, and, with your support, we want to help make that possible.
But we have a problem. Without your support, right now, we lack the funding to help with this brief.
Please help us file an amicus brief in Hamilton v. Pallozzi, with a tax-deductible contribution to the Downsize DC Foundation (via the secure form on the Zero Aggression Project website).
Thank you for your support,
Jim Babka, President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc &
Downsize DC Foundation