➡ The article discusses several legal cases related to the right of 18 to 20-year-olds to bear arms. It highlights victories in the 5th, 3rd, and Minnesota circuits, where laws restricting this age group’s right to carry arms were struck down as unconstitutional. The article also mentions ongoing cases, including one challenging a rule reclassifying pistol braces. The author emphasizes the importance of these cases in affirming the Second Amendment rights of young adults.

➡ The Department of Justice may change its interpretation of certain laws, affecting ongoing cases. There are concerns about Florida’s laws that seem to violate the rights of 18-20 year olds and due process. A case involving a student’s First Amendment rights over wearing a hat with a political statement is being supported by the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC). The FPC is committed to fighting for maximal human liberty, not just gun rights.

➡ The text discusses the issue of gun rights, focusing on the controversial machine gun ban. It argues that the ban is unconstitutional, citing recent court cases that support this view. The text also criticizes laws that permanently prohibit certain individuals from owning firearms, suggesting these laws create a caste system and devalue people’s lives. Lastly, it mentions a case in Mississippi where the ban was found unconstitutional as applied to a specific individual, hinting at potential changes in the future.

➡ The article discusses a legal case in Massachusetts concerning a handgun roster, which is seen as unconstitutional as it bans handguns not on the roster. The Supreme Court has previously stated that handguns cannot be banned, and the article argues that the state does not have the power to dictate which firearms can be used for self-
defense. The article also highlights the need for funding and plaintiffs for such cases, and encourages support and amplification of these issues on social media.

➡ The speaker expresses gratitude for ongoing support and emphasizes their commitment to fighting for people’s rights and freedom. They introduce a new series called “Freedom Under Fire” and mention that updates will be provided monthly on various ongoing cases. They express hope for positive news from the Department of Justice, emphasizing that change can be made with a simple action. The speaker encourages the audience to stay tuned and subscribe for future updates.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Guns and Gadgets. This is our new series called Freedom Under Fire, where I bring you the faces of the organizations fighting for us, fighting for the Second Amendment. And today we are joined by my friend Cody Wisniewski out of Firearms Policy Coalition Action Foundation. If you don’t know who he is or who FPC is, what they do, you’re about to learn today. It’s a group that I have been backing for years, and I honestly think you should, too. So this is a way for you to get to know the organizations. If you don’t know them, get to know them a little bit more intimately and see what they’re working on every single month.

Without any further ado. Cody, man, thank you for your time. I know exactly how busy you are. In fact, I know you’re working on briefings today. Thank you for your time, brother. I appreciate it. Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me on. Thank you for doing this and, you know, bringing attention and awareness to the work and to these cases and to everything that’s going on. We really appreciate it. Well, let’s jump into it, because I don’t want to keep you long from doing what you do. First off, give a little introduction of who you are, what FPC AF is, what they do.

Let people know what y’all are all about. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m the president CEO of FPC Action Foundation. Obviously, a lot of your. Your viewers are probably a little bit more familiar with Firearms Policy Coalition, fpc, which is our sister organization. The. The easiest way to think about it is, you know, we work together, the two organizations, to implement our kind of shared program, FPC Law, which is our entire legal litigation portfolio. So at FPC Action foundation, we basically provide expert legal oversight to that entire portfolio of what is now more than 60 cases across the country dealing with, you know, primarily issues specifically under right to keep and bear arms, but also some ancillary issues as well.

Sometimes, you know, I’m a litigator by trade. I started out in courtrooms, and sometimes I still. I still jump in myself and work and help and litigate some of those cases. And other times I just help make sure that they’re. They’re pointed in the right direction. So overall, you know, our goal is to. To bring forth a world of maximal human liberty. And our focus, you know, right now is on the right to keep and bear arms and, like I said, some ancillary issues, you know, speech associated with that, privacy associated with that. We have some cases dealing with those as well.

But predominantly, you know, we do litigation, we do education, we do amicus briefing, and we do advocacy. All things advocacy around your natural right to self defense. Awesome. So you are one of the, the gatekeepers of the lawsuit printer that goes. Yeah, yeah, I help make sure that the printer’s printing the right thing. We’ll, we’ll jump right into this. We’ll give some, some folks a coup cases you’re working on that obviously they’re very interested in. I have two that if you don’t hit, I don’t want to tell you what they are yet. Two that you all have been working on.

One that I’ve been covering for three and a half years now, that just popped up again, happened a couple days ago. So if you don’t talk about those, I do want to hit on those, but the floor is yours. Talk about whatever you want that you think that people need to know about cases as y’all are working on. Got it. I’ll talk about that one second because I know which one you’re talking about it. All right, the first, I think that’s really interesting. We actually just filed a brand new case on January 20, which of course there was nothing else happening on Monday, January 20, but.

So we actually just filed a case in the Northern district of Texas challenging the federal ban on, you know, firearms retailers transferring handguns, selling and transferring handguns to out of state residents in person. Right. So we all know that. Or if you don’t know that, you can, you can technically purchase a handgun out of, from an out of state retailer, but then you have to have it shipped to your home ffl, go throw your background check at your home FFL in your state of residence, and only then can you receive the handgun, which is unconstitutional under Bruin, you clearly have a right, well, long before Bruin, you clearly have a right to acquire handguns how you see fit.

And there’s no, under the Bruin test, there is no historical tradition supporting the fact that you can’t buy a handgun across state lines. So we filed that lawsuit, as I said, on the 20th. We’re really, it’s a really good opportunity to see exactly how this Department of Justice and this ATF are going to respond to that case and the position that they’re going to take because we’re, we are, you know, we’re pretty confident that based on the law and the history that that issue that, that that law is unconstitutional. And so now it’s a matter of how, how did the, how does the defense come in in response to it, yeah, this is a big one that when you all put it out, I, I, I definitely am interested to see how Pam Bondi has moved on to her.

She has the final vote now coming up. So how she will run the doj. What, what we think obviously is an obvious slam dunk here because you can buy a long gun in, in the CR across state lines and take it with you and, and drive it home if you want. And you hear all the people you know and the lefties and the anti gunners always say that the long guns, rifles are far more dangerous. So why can’t you do it for the less, conceivably less dangerous pistol? Doesn’t make any sense. So to see which way the DOJ goes on this one is going to I think give us a big insight on how the next two to four years are going to go.

Exactly. Yeah. It’s a, it’s a good opportunity for us to square up an issue that is clearly unconstitutional and to move the case along. But then it’s also a good opportunity for us to see, you know, how they’re, how they’re going to respond in cases like this. You know, there’s some other cases out there that are pending where the administration is going to have to decide what its position is on active cases. And there are also going to be cases that are going to be coming up in the future that is going to be the same.

But this is a really good straightforward issue that institutional under Bruin and it clearly puts the ball in their court to make a decision. Yeah. And Northern District of Texas has been like the Mecca for reading the Constitution the way it should when it comes to the second Amendment. So good strategy there. We have a couple individuals that are national trainers that travel to the area and then there’s an FFL in the area, Elite Precision. Elite Precision Customs that you know, they would, the plaintiffs have already said that they would go visit in that area and that they would purchase a handgun if they could.

So it’s the proper court to be in for those individuals and for that, that ffl. Awesome. So I’m loving the new case. I mean you don’t have one that I don’t love, but 20, 25, they’re like children, right. You love them all, but some you love more than others. Yeah. Right. All right, so hopefully we get rid of that band. What do you got next? So next is really is kind of a trio of cases that is really interesting. But I think it implicates what you’re asking, what you’re thinking about which is all of these 18 to 20 issues dealing with 18 to 20 carry and 18 to 20 purchase.

So the big case that we obviously had an update come down in is the reis, the ATF case. That is a case challenging the federal ban on 18 to 20 year olds purchasing handguns direct. So that’s obviously a massive win. It’s been pending for several years and it’s a win in the fifth Circuit. So it’s already teed up to have a broad effect and potentially depending on what the administration decides, move up to the Supreme Court for ruling on that. So basically it’s also very straightforward, right? There’s a federal law that bans 18 to 20 year olds from purchasing handguns direct.

So obviously we all know that if an 18, 20 year old gets a handgun, they have to do it through either private transfer for guardian, that sort of thing, which is silly and stupid and unconstitutional and immoral and offensive and all of the things, right. If it wasn’t for, I think I find it, I find the 18 to 20 cases immensely ironic. If it wasn’t for 18 to 20 year olds owning and bearing arms, we wouldn’t have a country. We wouldn’t even be having a conversation about what the second amendment protects because we wouldn’t have a country.

I mean you can solely lay the revolution due to the assistance and the participation of 18 to 20 year olds who made up significant parts of the revolutionary forces. So I think it’s such a straightforward issue, it’s massive. The history is so obviously on our side. The history so obviously states that these individuals owned arms, possessed arms, carried arms and used them in self defense. And by self defense I mean not only in defense of their own self, but in defense of their nation against tyranny. So that is a huge win coming out of the fifth Circuit.

You know, again, federal law, which means Department of Justice is on the and ATF are on the other side, they lost and so the ball is in their court, right? They get to decide how they want to move the case forward. If they want to ask the Supreme Court to review the fifth Circuit’s decision, they could technically also go en banc. What that means is basically they would just be requesting the entirety of the fifth Circuit to review the case on appeal, as you know. But on appeal, you know, initially you get a randomly drawn three judge panel of the circuit.

So the feds could ask for the full circuit, all of the judges to sit and review, but. Or they could let the win stand, but you know, that that remains to be Seen. But it’s also interesting in conjunction with a couple of other cases where we have wins, which is we’ve got, you know, two other 18 to 20 carry cases. We’ve got Laura, which is a big case dealing on that issue coming out of the 3rd Circuit in Pennsylvania where we successfully also this month struck down a law that prohibits 18 to 20 year olds from being able to carry in certain circumstances, in emergency circumstances.

And the court, you know, determined that that was unconstitutional, prohibiting 18 to 20 year olds from being able to, to bear arms in that context. And then we also had a case coming out of Minnesota, the Worf case, which also deals with 18 to 20 year old carry. In that case, Minnesota has already asked the Supreme Court for review. That one’s a little further along and we have a response due to that request this month. So in conjunction, all three of these cases are interesting, right? They all take on this 18 to 20 issue. Reese obviously has the federal government as defendants.

Worth has the Minnesota state government, Laura has the Pennsylvania state government. But they all tee up this issue which is 18 to 20 year olds have Second Amendment protected rights just like all adults. And I think in conjunction following those cases is going to be very important and very interesting over the next few months. Yeah, it’s going to be great because you can start to see the dominoes have been falling for a year plus. And now that we hope we have a more constitutional approach before us here for a couple years, it’s only, I mean common sense would dictate that this victory streak should continue.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And this is, this is an issue where you’re right, it’s just been success on top of success. Right. There haven’t been courts that are coming, really haven’t been courts that are coming out the other way. With, with one minor exception. It’s been you like uniformly courts recognizing whether they like it or not. And some of them are very clear in their opinions that they don’t like it that 18 to 20 year old adults have the same constitutionally protected right to keep a bear arms as other adults. And that’s shouldn’t, that shouldn’t be an extreme sentence to utter.

But apparently we need to bring several different lawsuits in several different states, including against the federal government to get that one settled. Yeah. And I know you guys are happy to do it. We’re blessed to have you all doing it on our behalf. So thank you. As part of the people. We really, really appreciate what you all are doing on our behalf. Hey, of course I appreciate we couldn’t do it without everyone. Right. I mean, we are here because of everybody’s support of our work. We are here because everybody is out there and cares and you know, finds a way to support it in their own way.

Whether it be on sharing stories about it, whether it be on amplifying the message like you’re doing right now, whether it be, you know, supporting the organizations, you know, joining FPC as a member or, you know, donating to FPC Action Foundation. We’re a 501C3. You know, everybody is part of this fight. It’s not just us. I just get the good fortune of being the guy that gets to sue the federal government for a living or sue state governments for a living. So I’m pretty blessed. Well, I’ll let you continue on, but I will say that you weren’t, you didn’t properly guess.

Nope. There was one that I’ve been covering for a little longer than the 18 to 20 year old, so hopefully I get to stump you. But I’ll, I’ll bring it up when you’re, when you’re done with your presentation here. So you’re definitely gonna beat me because I think so. The other category for me that’s, that’s really interesting right now is the same stuff that’s in the category kind of what we were talking about with elite precision customs and that interstate handgun transfer, which is active cases where the administration has yet to signal what it’s going to do.

The biggest one of these to me is the pistol brace case is mock Mach v. Garland, which will soon no longer be V. Garland, but that’s the name right now. And so obviously that’s our challenge to the pistol brace rule. You know, for a rewind mid last year, you know, we got an opinion out of the, the Northern District of Texas that we were victorious and that the court was vacating the rule that was trying to reclassify pistol braces and braced pistols as if they were short bow rifles. And they were open about this, right? In the rule, they, they state that they’re pre.

That they were confident or that they believed rather that the rule would reclassify 99 of brace pistols. Right. You know what you’re doing, right? It’s, this isn’t just some. Oh well, actually after a decade of guidance the other way, we reread the law and actually it means this. Like they knew what they were doing. But fortunately, you know, the court vacated the final rule and the federal government appealed. Interestingly, what we didn’t see in the mock case was Any action by the government to stay the district court’s decision. So a lot of times, right, when the government loses, whether it be the feds or a state or local, when they lose, they immediately run to the court and say, hey, I need you to put a pause on your ruling because this is going to have horrendous impacts across whatever jurisdiction.

Right. It always doesn’t matter what the law is, doesn’t matter what the order is. It’s always going to have horrendous impacts. They always say it’s for law enforcement and public safety. Right. So they run in and say, hey, you need to pause your ruling so that we can appeal the case. They didn’t do that here. Right. They just. And in fact, they didn’t even appeal quickly. They waited until their full deadline to appeal to file their notice of appeal to the Fifth Circuit, which is interesting. Right. They didn’t do that in other contexts. Do you think that’s because the ruling totally eviscerated them? Like, they usually don’t get that big of a spanking? I like to think so.

I mean, the, the Pistol Brace case, we. We had very clear arguments. Like, it was. It was very clear that what they did was unlawful and unconstitutional for several reasons. I mean, they. The Administrative Procedure act, the APA is what governs agencies making rules, but also, you know, the process that they have to follow. And it’s just very clear that what they did was a complete violation of the apa. It was also unconstitutional. But that’s, you know, apparently for another day. But yeah, I mean, I think it was. I think it was a clear victory, and I think it was.

So what they did was so blatantly wrong. You know, we were. I was waiting to see if they were going to appeal. Of course they did. So the case is currently pending at the Fifth Circuit. It’s been fully briefed, but it hasn’t been set for argument. And it hasn’t been argued. So the case is just kind of sitting and waiting. Now, the 5th Circuit could set it for argument any day. It could. It could also just issue an opinion if it wanted to. It doesn’t have to wait for argument. But traditionally, circuit courts in cases like this would set argument.

So the Fifth Circuit could set argument any day, and I think that would prompt the administration to have to make a decision about its appeal. I mean, the brief that was filed was filed by the Department of Justice under the prior administration. I would be shocked if this Department of Justice has the exact same interpretation of the law that that Department of Justice did. But, you know, it, it remains to be seen. And so I think that’s, you know, there are, there are a couple cases that are like that. You know, Reese kind of falls into that perspective too of do they maintain the same defense elite precision.

Customs falls into that. But Mock, I think is, is a really good example of what is the next step where you have a very clear victory and there is something pending that the administration could or could not do. You know, they could withdraw their appeal. It’s been fully briefed. They’d have to do it. They’d have to get permission to do so. They could file a notice that, you know, their brief no longer reflects the position of the Department of Justice. They could, there’s a lot of things that they could do. They could also just go in and argue it.

Who knows. But I think there’s a few of those cases that are really interesting sitting out there that we expect to see some responses to or at least position changes potentially to in the near future. Now, in all your experience litigating this stuff, have you ever come across Pam Bondi? And if you have give us a little insight and if you haven’t, maybe do you know somebody who has. Yeah, just tangentially, I have never, I have never sued Boggy. Maybe I need to put Florida on a checklist for a lawsuit. I think I’m, I have my checklist of states that I visited which is pretty good.

I’m up in the high 30s and I also have a checklist of states that I’ve, I’ve sued, which is slightly lower but not as low as it should be. So I’ve never been on the other side of the V than Bondi. Personally as council, I, you know, do know that there have been several suits in Florida that we followed FPC Action foundation to file amicus briefs in. You know, there, there’s, you know, there’s an 18 to 20 case in Florida, NRA v. Bondi, that Florida was defending its 18 to 20 carry law, which is, you know, really deeply concerning.

There’s also, of course, the, the, the whole issue with Florida’s red flag laws. Right. That came up when there was in defense. So, you know, from a legal perspective, of course, I work for a 501C3. I don’t advocate for, you know, I don’t, I don’t advocate for or against any sort of political positions. I would say as a lawyer, it’s a little concerning when you’ve got somebody who is, is defending two laws that are both pretty blatantly. Unconstitutional. One because it, it violates the rights of 18 to 20 year old adults. The other because it, you know, has some deep and severe due process concerns where, you know, people are not really actually able to advocate for themselves or have their day in court and are treated as criminals before they’re ever determined to be.

Yeah, it’s even worse when it’s a perceived stronghold for conservative Republicans and there’s no excuse for what’s happened, but we’re trying to chip away at that with the next election anyway, so three solid updates. Do you have anything else, sir? No. Now I’m curious. Those were, those were kind of like the highlights. I thought, I thought those were the most interesting. There’s a couple wins in there which are always good in a new case. But now I’m curious what, what the one that you’re, you’re wondering about is. All right, so I’ll give you two and then I have a bonus question that my own, my old home state is desperately wondering.

So the first one is a case that I covered, early 22, maybe even late 21. It’s a First Amendment case about the Second Amendment. You remember the hat? Come and take it. Oh, C.S. yes. Ah, okay, man. Okay. Yeah, So I told you. We did. Obviously, you know, we do some, some stuff that’s ancillary. Did you listen to argument? I did, I did, yeah. I, I like it. It’s. I mean, obviously the school did the kid wrong. Why don’t you give people a quick. So basically what happened was there was a, a student, an elementary school student who wore a hat to the school’s hat day and her, it was her dad’s hat that she, she treasured and it was a come and take it hat, but had a depiction of an AR instead of the canon that the Gonzalez flag has.

Right. So obviously there’s historical things, there’s a little bit of a political statement. It’s very clearly speech. Right. It is very clearly that. Well, the school told her she couldn’t wear it, took the hat away and. Which is a clear First Amendment violation. Violation. First Amendment protected rights. So, you know, CS brought suit, FPC’s been supporting that suit and it’s gone all the way through the courts. Eugene Volok, who is the best person in the country on the First Amendment, probably at least one of the best people, you know, worked on the briefing and argued the case.

And, you know, it was very clear that under existing First Amendment precedent, her, the hat was speech and that the school would have to identify an actual Disruption to school activity. Not perceived, not potential. The school has to actually identify some true harm or fear that it’s causing among students. This is all based on the Tinker case, which is a very famous First Amendment case. And the school didn’t do so. It’s just obvious that the school didn’t do so argument. The. The 6th Circuit where the case was argued, didn’t seem to grasp the exact Tinker argument that we believe clearly applies in this case.

And so, you know, Eugene did an amazing job arguing the case, made the point very clear that the school didn’t do what it needed to do, didn’t prove what it needed to prove, couldn’t prove what it needed to prove, and that even, of course, elementary school students still have First Amendment protected rights. So, you know, it remains to be seen. You can never know exactly how an opinion is going to come out after something’s been argued at a circuit court. I would say, you know, as of right now, we, fpc, remains committed to supporting the case.

You know, we’ll continue to support the case. Something changes, you know, we would certainly figure that out. But it is a really important issue. I Hope that the 6th Circuit looks at briefing and sees how clear of a violation that this is and comes out with an opinion that. That demonstrates as much. But if they don’t, then we’ll decide next steps from there. Yeah, that’s a. That’s a. An awesome case where I remember covering the incident as soon as it happened, and I made a plea like anybody who can help this. This family, please do. And I got a.

An email. Email or phone call. It’s like five years ago now. Might have been Brandon, might have been somebody else at the time, but they were like, hey, you know what? We’re gonna. We’re gonna take care of this. And I was like, good on you. Let me know how I can help. We’ll get you whatever we need to get as far as funds for you. So it’s good to see that, guys, FPC doesn’t just sue the government. They actually will stick up for a child who was wronged over wearing a hat. Because, you know, liberals with it, you know, the hat’s the.

Really the problem. Craziness. So, you know, good on y’all for. I can buy the case, man. Oh, absolutely. That’s a really important one. You know, the. The obviously speech isn’t necessarily my area of expertise, but having Eugene on that case and arguing that case is. I mean, as somebody who’s fighting for. For it’s a. An elementary school student who’s fighting for their rights. Right. Like, you can’t ask for a better advocate than Eugene in the First Amendment space. And you know, we’re, we’re really, I will remain hopeful but you know, as always, like, we’ll do what we need, we need to do to make sure that people’s rights are advocated for and defended.

I also think it’s a phenomenal way for a second Amendment organization to help educate a child about what this really means to our country. And we’re here to stand by you and hopefully CS grows up and you know, teaches other people what it’s, what it’s all about and, and helps avoid another scenario like that down the road for another child, which would be phenomenal. It’s, you know, perpetuate that freedom thing. Yeah, absolutely. Also, we have 60 plus active cases right now. If I went through the list of which one you were waiting for, I would not have guessed that.

Now that I know the backstory, it makes sense. So that’s, that’s awesome. Yeah, that’s a really, that’s a really interesting case. But in like you said, it’s just a really important one. It’s not always just about gun rights. Right. FPC and Action foundation, we fight for a world of maximal human liberty. Right. It isn’t just focused on firearms. I got into this space because I see firearms as that microcosm of the macrocosm. If you can treat gun rights this way and you can do all of these things to people’s ability to protect their own lives, then what else can you do to all of our other rights? Right? The idea of if life, liberty and either the pursuit of happiness or property, depending on which one you prefer, but life is first.

Well, if you can’t preserve and protect your life, then what is it? It creates a, a caste system between people where government officials think that they’re more important because they get to have armed security and their lives are, they believe, must believe they’re much more valuable than yours if they’re going to stop you from owning, possessing arms, especially those arms that they are using in their defense via security that you are paying for. And it’s just deeply offensive. But the point being, natural rights are natural rights, like your right as a human being to communicate, to express yourself, to protect your own life, to privacy, you know, being secure in your papers, everything is incredibly important.

Well, the next one I have, I can’t remember the name of the case off the top of my head because it’s one of those days where things are blurring together on me. Came out last week of January. So a week ago. And it had to do with the, the. I think one of the most unconstitutional laws is that machine gun ban, although it had to do with the individual. But a judge actually came out on the side of freedom saying that, you know what, text, history and tradition, actually the ban on machine guns is unconstitutional. Yeah, yeah.

So there’s been a couple of these cases. There’s one that just came out from Mississippi. That’s the case. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Here I got the name right. Here it is USV Brown. Brown. Okay. Yeah. That just came out last week out of Mississippi. Interesting. If you review the opinion, the judge tries to track Bruin. Yep. Doesn’t necessarily seem to enjoy tracking. Yeah, that was the good part. Yeah. I mean I think those, those machine gun cases are, are really interesting. Right. Like first there’s this common misconception that everybody thinks that machine guns are banned. Of course people that are, that are tight and close in the space know that that’s not true, but just have more heavily regulated than most other.

Just about every other firearm. There also is this issue, right. When you look at Bruin, when you look at text as informed by history, can the government make the argument that machine guns, these heavy regulations on machine guns comport with history? And I think courts, as they’re tangling with this question, are coming out and saying like, no, the government hasn’t made its case. I think you’re going to see that not just in machine guns. I think you’re going to see that in a lot of other contexts. Right. This was the, the concern with upholding the original meaning of the Constitution that a lot of judges and anti gun and anti rights activists talked about was like, oh no, so many of these laws don’t comport with history.

What if they get struck down? And to my point is like, well, why do we have so many laws that don’t comport with history? Why do we have so many laws that violate the original meaning of the Constitution and of the Bill of Rights? So I think you’re going to see more of these. I think it’s, it’s not just going to be this. It’s going to be all sorts of different issues. Right. 18 to 20 has been like the big one where we’ve seen a ton of victories and courts just kind of almost unanimously coming behind it.

I think there’s a lot of issues when you look at some of the Federal prohibitions under 922. Right. There’s some of these issues where the federal government’s 922 felon in possession. You know, we call it the, you know, felon gun ban, but of course, it applies to anybody who is convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year’s imprisonment. Right. It’s not felonies. It also doesn’t mean that you actually served more than one year in prison. It just means that your crime is. The crime you are convicted of can carry a sentence longer than that.

Yeah, it clearly violates. There’s clearly no historical tradition for some of those. I mean, one of my favorite cases in. In how offensive it was was somebody that was convicted for importing illegal cassette tapes in 1987. They are forever prohibited from possessing arms. Most people don’t know what cassette tapes are now. Like. Like, I’m probably the tail end of having a cassette tape When I was a little kid, like, there. It’s. It’s astounding. Right. But that person is forever prohibited. There’s a case going up right now, the range case, which deals with somebody who allegedly was receiving, like, food stamp benefits and then mowed some lawns on the side, got some additional income.

And it wasn’t reported whether that was intentional or not. You know, uncertain, but it wasn’t reported. And so by quote, unquote, allegedly lying to the. To the government about it, their food stamp application, they committed a crime that is punishable by more than one year’s imprisonment, and they’re forever prohibited from owning arms. Yeah, there was another one where somebody, like, apparently lied on their taxes and the government’s position, and the court even said this was. Well, the individual was clearly the kind of person that should be prohibited from owning arms because, get this, they deprived the government of property that it was due.

Okay. Right. How offensive is that? And again, this goes back to my. My point of this. Create. It’s. It’s creating a kind of caste system. What you’re saying when you say that that person cannot possess a firearm for the rest of their life, what you are saying is that person cannot use the most effective means of defending their life in a. For the rest of their life. Right. That inherently means. You’re saying that person’s life is less valuable. Corrective. Is that, like, who. Who are you, you know, politicians sitting in your glass house, defended with machine guns, probably for saying that that person’s life is inherently less value.

That is. It’s so offensive. It’s so immoral. But I’m sorry for the tangent, but yes, I think that’s It’s a really interesting decision coming out of Mississippi. You know, there have been others. There’s one coming out of Kansas I believe as well. I think you’re going to see more of these. I think you’re going to see more of these cases where courts are forced to really actually look to the original public meaning of the Constitution and the government. The government bears the burden. Right. If the United States is concerned that this law might get struck down, it bears the burden of proving that the law comports with our historical tradition.

So it has full opportunity to make its case and to show that the law should be upheld. I just don’t know that it’s going to be able to in all these contexts. One of the best parts about this case in Mississippi was that the. In all the other cases I’ve seen the. I don’t have the exact number but like when they talk about machine guns, you always hear that pre86 that owns 124000 some odd hand machine guns that are still out in circulation. But in the Mississippi court, when I read the. The ruling, the judge was like, you know what the ATF says there’s 724000 machine guns in circulation.

We have no reason to think that they’re lying. So those are the numbers we’re going to use. And that’s, that’s definitely not something that’s not common. So that was phenomenal. To see a judge who obviously didn’t want to say that but was being handcuffed by Bruin was phenomenal because now that’ll be used going forward as well. That number, which is great to see. So for everybody who’s excited about that, it was only found unconstitutional as it was applied to Brown in this case. He lucked out, but hopefully the rest will be coming soon. All right, dude, the last one I have for you, everybody in Massachusetts and, and I worked with FPC years ago to go after that handgun roster.

They’re all wondering what’s going on. I know you all filed for a summary judgment just because I get the com. I get the comments and questions all the time. If you could just let folks in Massachusetts know from. Not that I’m calling you to horse, but from the horse’s mouth where that stands. What you looked to do when you filed for summary judgment. Yeah. So basically courts move at the speed of something very slow. I’m gonna, I’m a lawyer that’s appearing in plenty of courts. Let me just say that that way you could, you could insert thing here especially Massachusetts.

Yeah. Well, and, and we’ve always. There’s. Right. There’s some circuits that are. There’s some circuits or some district courts that have been sitting on opinions for 13 months, fully briefed, waiting for 13 months. Here’s the other thing that you had happened with a lot of these cases, right? A lot of these cases were pushing through in 2020, 2021, early 2022. And then Bruin comes down, right? A lot of cases got stayed pending. Bruin, a lot of cases. Then as soon as Bruen came down, what it did was the court isn’t going to issue. The Supreme Court isn’t going to issue opinions, just not how it does.

Isn’t going to issue opinions in 10, 12 cases. It’s going to issue an opinion in one case and it’s going to send everything back down to the district court and they’re going to go, hey, redo it. But with this one case, we decided. So you get that in a lot of cases and you get these cases bouncing back and forth because of it. Sometimes things get stuck up in, in this, you know, perpetual suit. I once worked on a case just completely off topic, but just for, for color commentary. I once worked on a case that was in perpetual status reports.

We were filing status reports every like night, every like three to six months. And the case was 12 years old. So sometimes things get caught up in weird spots. The fortunate thing for Massachusetts Granada is the case dealing with the handgun roster in Massachusetts. The fortunate thing is, you know, we have moved for summary judgment now. So that is at the district court that is on the merits, us basically saying court, you have everything you need. Just decide this case in our favor. The law is blatantly unconstitutional. The other benefit that we have in that case, of course, is we’ve had other courts start talking about rosters.

We’ve had other courts start talking about access to firearms. And so we’re able to use those things to the benefit, basically. The argument straightforward. Right. I think all of your, all of your viewers will completely understand it, which is just, it’s unconstitutional. It’s just all that a handgun roster is, is a ban on all of the handguns that are not on the roster. Right. It’s just a more selective Heller. And the Supreme Court has already said that you cannot ban handguns. It didn’t say you couldn’t ban Glocks. It said you can’t ban handguns. And it also of course set forth this kind of like common use test, which has some skeptical reception.

So I’m happy To also talk about, right. The point of common use isn’t saying that the Constitution says arms in common use are protected, right? That’s not what the second amendment says. Where common use comes from is the Supreme Court looked at an arms ban. Thing that we could find in the historical record that may justify an arms ban is banning arms that are both dangerous and unusual. Thus, if it is not dangerous and unusual, there is no historical support for banning the arm. Common flows from that. If something is common, it is inherently not unusual.

Now common can mean a lot of things, right? Common can mean numerically common, right? There’s over 700,000 machine guns in circulation, most likely, okay, numerically common, it could mean jurisdictionally common, right? Handguns are. There are handgun rosters in a handful of states with like 4, 5. So, so jurisdictionally, right? These, these guns are common. It could also mean and does also can also mean that they are similar to other commonly owned arms, right? A, a glock and a P320 are functionally similar. I mean I guess some people might have some, some disagreement with that on certain points, but functionally, right, they’re both just semiautomatic magazine fed handguns.

So that is where kind of common really comes in. It’s not as if people are saying the Supreme Court has said common use is the test. It’s that flow of common comes. Common use comes from history. Now that might not be the only thing, right? You could easily have a case that goes up where something wasn’t common, but you could argue that it was protected. And the court would have to look at the history and say, well, is there a historical tradition of being able to ban something, something like this? All, all point being said is that the handguns that are not on the handgun roster are clearly common are clearly in all senses of the word, cannot be banned by the state.

And that’s all a roster is. A roster is we are banning all but these and that the state doesn’t get to do that. The state does not have the power to tell you that you cannot protect your life with a firearm that is not on the roster. Well, I’m grateful that y’all took up the case years ago and have stick stuck with it throughout, throughout the years and a few years now because there’s, I mean let’s be honest, the first circuit’s not the place people say, you know what, I’m going to challenge this on the second amendment and I’m going to go to the the first because it’s notorious for fighting you all the Way, tooth and nail, every step of the way, never giving, even knowing they’re wrong, never giving an inch.

So thank you for, you know, for doing it in the first and you know, based off of a phone call from this guy. So I really appreciate it, helping the Massachusetts folks who are still watch regularly and still donate regularly. So I wanted to give them a shout out. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, we’ve got 60 plus active cases across the country. If I, if we had unlimited funding and attorneys, we could have hundreds. And so it’s all about filing, you know what we can, when we can, focusing on these issues, making sure that we’ve got cases across the country that are dealing with issues across the country.

And you led right into the next. Yeah, you led right to the next and final segment perfectly. There’s always somebody who says, I live here. Why doesn’t XYZ sue this place? First off, they need funding. If you’re not a member, you can join. I’ll have links down below. You can join FPC. You can donate to FPC. You can also donate to FPCAF. It’s a 501C3. You want them to do it like the, the lifeblood is us, the membership. That’s where they get the funds to do this. Because lawyer, I mean we’re talking to in a lawyer.

There’s only five lawyers I like. I mean they’re all, none of them are cheap. So they need the funding guys and gals, they really do. And the next thing they need are plaintiffs. So if you are wronged in something and you want to possibly be that person who could be the knight and shining, shining armor for the rest of the country, maybe you reach out to FPC and ask them, hey, listen, this happened to me. Do you think we have a lawsuit? And if you need me, I’m there. So money in plaintiffs is a huge thing.

You know, they could have all the money in the world, but if nobody wants to have their name on a lawsuit, it makes it a lot, a lot more difficult. Anything you want to add to that, sir? No, I think you covered it. I mean, you can go to firearmspolicy.org to join FPC. You can go to fpcactionfoundation.org to donate. We’re a 501c fee C3. So donations are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law, which is my fun lawyer asterisk. But no, you got it. I mean the other part of that too though is, is just supporting and amplifying.

Right? Like what you’re doing right now is, is amazing and we really appreciate it, letting us bring attention to some of these cases. But people can do it also, like engaging on social media, amplifying on social media. You know, we understand memberships at FPC are very reasonable, but we also understand that, you know, that’s not what everybody can do. And so anything that you can do to amplify the message, the cause, the fight, the cases, you know, we appreciate. And that’s, and that’s massive. Just continuing to, to push this issue. Culture is hugely important, right? We’re having, we can have conversations about braced pistols and SBRs today that we couldn’t have 10 years ago because the culture wasn’t out there.

And it’s just hugely important that everybody is exercising their rights, is engaging on these issues and if they can, are, are supporting the fight. Well, dude, I, I really, really appreciate you coming on. I know you are super busy and I know as soon as we stop recording, you’re gonna go right back to kicking ass and making that, you know, printer rear up. So on behalf of everybody here who is a second amendment lover, not just on this channel, but in this country, thank you for doing what you’re doing, man. Absolutely. Happy to. Like I said, I get to, I get to work and sue the government every day on behalf of everybody’s rights.

And so it’s a, it’s a fun job to have and I certainly can’t complain. I also have to give to, just to take the platform for a minute. Quick shout out to Cole, who knows who he is. I told him I would, so, but just, you know, thank you. Thank you for having me on. Love doing it. Love coming on. Love your support of the cases and the organizations over the years. You know, it means a lot. And we just, we just want to keep fighting for people. We just want to keep vindicating people’s rights and, and making people more free.

That’s it. Well, I appreciate it, man. Thank you very much. Same team. I’m always here to help out guys and gals. Welcome to the new series Freedom Under Fire. And Cody will be back monthly to give us all updates on some of those 60 plus cases that are constantly evolving throughout the system. And hopefully maybe one of these months we’ll have something good to report from the Pam Bondi Run doj. That would be, that would be nice if she actually just did what she could do with a stroke of a pen. It’s, it’s. They, they have all opportunity in the world to do the right thing.

Oh, we shall see. Stay tuned. Subscribe down below. See you all in the next one. Take care.
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