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CA: Woman fatally stabbed man outside Merced apartment in self-defense, police say
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A 25-year-old man was killed in a stabbing outside an apartment complex in Merced on Thursday, and investigators are still determining whether the incident involved self-defense, police said.
Officers responded shortly after 4 p.m. to West 19th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, according to Sgt. Christian Lupian of the Merced Police Department.
Police said the stabbing stemmed from a family dispute.
"We believe that there were several people involved in this altercation that happened," Lupian said.
Investigators believe a 25-year-old woman stabbed the man during the altercation. The man died at the scene, police said. The woman was taken to a hospital for treatment of stab wounds she also sustained. |
WA: Teen suspect in Bite of Seattle shooting released to home detention
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The 15-year-old suspect in the Bite of Seattle shooting was ordered released to electronic home detention Wednesday after a judge cited a “colorable” self-defense claim.
“Probable cause was found, he was kept, and now new evidence has indicated that there may be some other things at issue. There’s a colorable claim of self-defense,” Judge Veronica Galvan said.
The teenager will stay at his father’s home under electronic monitoring, with an adult required to be present at all times. The decision follows a Sept. 1 ruling that kept the teenager in custody after his attorney requested electronic home monitoring at his father’s home. |
AR: Mountain Home NJROTC marksmanship team takes home $5,000 from Second Amendment Dinner
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Two cadets from the Mountain Home High School NJROTC marksmanship team walked onto the stage at Tuesday’s annual Second Amendment Dinner and walked off with a $5,000 check for their program.
Cadet Lt. Aspen Douglas and Cadet Lt. Cmdr. Tyler Webb represented the unit at the community event and formally accepted the donation, which is earmarked for the marksmanship team. Program leadership said the money will go toward training resources, updated equipment and travel to regional competitions. |
NY: Federal Judge Strikes Down New York Body Armor Ban, Rules Bulletproof Vests Protected by Second Amendment
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A federal judge has struck down New York's ban on buying body armor, ruling that the Second Amendment protects bulletproof vests and other defensive equipment, not just firearms. The decision found that the state failed to establish a historical justification for restricting purchases by ordinary residents.
U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. of the Western District of New York issued the ruling Wednesday, October 21, 2026, ordering the state to stop enforcing its purchase and sale restrictions. The judge stayed the injunction for 14 days, keeping the law in effect while New York has an opportunity to seek appellate relief. |
MI: Portage homeowner arrested in deadly stabbing of car break-in suspect won't face charges
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A Portage homeowner who killed a suspected car break-in suspect last month will not face charges.
The Kalamazoo County Prosecuting Attorney said this week that after reviewing the case and the law, he will not authorize criminal charges.
On Sept. 30, the break-in happened at a home on Cedarcrest Ave. The homeowner stabbed the suspect.
A 54-year-old Cedarcrest resident told police he heard someone breaking into a vehicle in his driveway around 3 a.m. He went outside and confronted a 51-year-old man from Kalamazoo. |
NM: 2A Groups Continue to Fight New Mexico's 7-Day Waiting Period After State Appeals – Again
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Several pro-2A groups have joined forces to file suit in New Mexico over the state attorney general’s continued enforcement of a seven-day waiting period for gun buyers despite two federal judges’ rulings that the law is unconstitutional.
“New Mexico’s Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and Attorney General Raúl Torrez are blatantly and unconstitutionally enforcing New Mexico’s seven-day waiting period law, despite it having twice been held to violate Second Amendment rights of law-abiding New Mexicans,” stated Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade organization leading the lawsuit. |
US ban on switchblades is unconstitutional, appeals court rules
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A US law that bans the manufacturing of switchblades for sale or distribution across state lines violates the right to keep and bear arms under the US Constitution’s Second Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled.
The New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in a ruling late on Wednesday said a landmark 2022 US Supreme Court decision requiring modern gun restrictions to be consistent with the nation’s history and tradition of arms regulation also applied to bladed weapons covered by the Federal Switchblade Act.
US Circuit Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote in the decision that Congress adopted that law in 1958 during a period of “hysteria” surrounding juvenile delinquency, ... |
WA: How can Democrats promote gun control while going soft on gun criminals?
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The Bite of Seattle shooting earlier this year is yet another reminder that Democratic demands for gun control are meaningless, as such laws do not prevent criminals from acquiring guns, and Democrats don’t care to enforce them anyway.
The food festival shooting that took place this summer left three dead and four others wounded, including a 2-year-old child. The defense attorney for the 15-year-old suspect arrested in the shooting said that the suspect was firing his gun into the crowd only in self-defense, alleging that one of the other suspects involved fired first. |
TX: Burglar Breaks In; Leaves With Gunshot Wound And Criminal Charge
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A burglar in Mesquite, Texas, displayed poor victim-selection skills when he tried to force his way into a home early Saturday, local media reported.
Police say residents of a home were awakened by banging inside the residence at 4:00 a.m. local time, WFAA.com, a Texas TV station, reported. Upon investigating, a man in the residence who retrieved a firearm confronted the intruder and fired a shot, wounding the suspect. |
France riots reinforce the genius of the Second Amendment
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The images emerging from France and Italy offer a grim preview of what happens when a society surrenders its right to self-defense to an incompetent state. In Paris, a viral video captured a man pouring a pot of boiling water off a third-floor balcony onto a violent mob of Muslims and far-leftists looting and rioting on the street below. In a disarmed nation, a citizen watching his neighborhood burn is reduced to tenth-century improvisations while waiting for a police force that is overwhelmed, politically paralyzed, or worse. |
Winning back ground on the Second Amendment
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As a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, it’s always gratifying to share good news about our ongoing fight to preserve one of our most important individual constitutional rights. This month brought significant progress to take back ground for gun owners, lost in 1934 with the National Firearms Act.
Effective Oct. 9, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced a nationwide policy ending tax and registration requirements for suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and certain other regulated items, based on a lawsuit I joined with 14 other state attorneys general. This is a win for gun owners and for everyone who understands that government must operate within its constitutional limits. |
5th Circuit: Federal Switchblade Act Unconstitutional
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Huge Win! In a major victory for Knife Rights and knife owners across America, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that Section 1242 of the Federal Switchblade Act (FSA) violates the Second Amendment; "Applying the framework articulated in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, we hold that the FSA [Federal Switchblade Act] is unconstitutional."
In Knife Rights, Inc. v. Blanche, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit ruled that the federal government's longstanding restrictions on the interstate manufacture, transportation, and distribution of automatically opening knives cannot survive constitutional scrutiny under the Second Amendment. |
Opposition Governments File Briefs with Supreme Court in SAF's 'Assault Weapons' Ban Challenges
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"Categorical bans on the most commonly owned rifles in America violate the Second Amendment, full stop," said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. "Unfortunately, countless peaceful Americans across the U.S. are subject to these unconstitutional bans, which single out and demonize modern semi-automatic rifles for nonsensical reasons like the adjustability of a shoulder stock or angle of a grip. The Supreme Court has already laid out a clear method of analysis for statutes like these – and has set constitutional standards that these laws simply fail to meet. The opposition briefs filed attempt 'creative' tactics to avoid those standards – or challenge them outright – and we are confident the Court will not be persuaded." |
Defending Its AR-15 Ban, Cook County Urges SCOTUS To Ignore the Rifle's Popularity
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On December 2, the Supreme Court will consider constitutional challenges to "assault weapon" bans in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois, that cover widely owned rifles, including the AR-15. As the plaintiffs in those consolidated cases see it, such laws plainly violate the Second Amendment because they prohibit arms in common use for lawful purposes. In briefs filed on Wednesday, Connecticut and Cook County urge the justices to reject that test, saying a weapon's popularity is not dispositive. The relevant question, they say, is whether their rifle restrictions fit a historical tradition of banning "unusually dangerous weapons."
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SAF, NRA File Amicus Challenging Lifetime Firearms Ban for Nonviolent Felons
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The Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association have filed an amicus brief in United States v. Cordova, urging the Fifth Circuit to adopt a dangerousness standard to challenges of lifetime federal firearms bans.
The case returns to the Fifth Circuit after the court granted rehearing en banc and vacated the panel opinion. The brief filed today urges the court to hold that historical tradition supports disarming only dangerous persons – those with a proven proclivity for violence or who pose a threat to the government – not every person convicted of a felony. Colonial and Founding-era restrictions targeted the dangerous. |
NM: SAF, Partners Challenge New Mexico's Firearms Purchase Waiting Period
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SAF is joined in NSSF v. Torrez by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, National Rifle Association, New Mexico Firearms Industry Association, New Mexico Shooting Sports Association, Calibers Shooting Sports Center, Omni Tactical USA, Right to Bear Arms and private citizen Peter Hackett.
"It's a sad state of affairs when a state attorney general won't follow the rulings set by a court of law," said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. "There comes a point where policy decisions go beyond mere ideology and enter the realm of zealotry, and New Mexico officials are toeing that line." |
Cook County, Connecticut Defend AR-15 Bans in Supreme Court Briefs Ahead of December Arguments
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Cook County, Illinois, and Connecticut are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold their AR-15 bans by rejecting a central argument drawn from District of Columbia v. Heller: that firearms commonly possessed by law-abiding Americans for lawful purposes cannot be categorically prohibited. Their newly submitted briefs challenge the constitutional significance of common use, arguing that governments retain authority to outlaw widely owned rifles if lawmakers and courts consider them unusually dangerous. |
NY: Federal Judge Strikes Down New York Body Armor Ban, Rules Armor Protected by Second Amendment
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A federal district court judge in the Western District of New York has struck down the Empire State’s ban on body armor, finding it unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
The case, Heeter v. James (1:24-cv-00623, U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York), is a Second Amendment challenge to New York’s body armor purchase and sale restrictions. On October 21, 2026, Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, struck down the ban as applied to ordinary law-abiding civilians, and denied the defendants’ cross-motions. |
NY: This State Wanted to Prevent Residents From Owning Body Armor. A Federal Judge Just Said 'No.'
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A federal judge struck down New York’s ban on body armor for ordinary residents, ruling that it violates the Second Amendment.
New York passed the law in 2022 after the racially motivated mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo and insisted that body armor is “a tactical accessory to firearms.”
Two residents and the Firearms Policy Coalition filed the lawsuit, and U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra issued his ruling on Wednesday.
The judge applied the Second Amendment framework established by the Supreme Court’s rulings in cases like Heller and Bruen. |
Anti-semi-auto jurisdictions cite weapons you never heard of to justify gun bans
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“While the arguments levied in support of the assault weapons bans we’ve challenged in these cases lack legal support, they weren’t unforeseen,” Second Amendment Foundation Senior Director of Litigation William Sack told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “What we saw from the opposition briefs was more of the same ill-conceived arguments that were adopted at least in part by the Second and Seventh Circuits.”
“Since SCOTUS has already made clear that arms in common use are protected by the Second Amendment, the defendants here are left to argue that either these rifles – owned by the millions – aren’t commonly owned by law-abiding Americans, or that the Supreme Court’s test itself is flawed,” Sack continued. |
AR: Arkansas ballot fight over right to bear arms amendment includes ammunition, firearm accessories
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Arkansas voters are deciding on four statewide ballot issues this election year, including Issue 2, which proposes amending the state constitution's right to keep and bear arms.
The amendment would specify that the right includes the possession and use of ammunition, firearm accessories, and firearm components. It also adds that the right applies to hunting, recreation, and any other lawful purpose.
Sponsors of the issue say the added language has always been part of the right to bear arms but argue the amendment would expand the language.
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MA: Massachusetts Supreme Court Upholds Age-21 Firearm Carry Restriction, Deepening Circuit Split
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The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) has ruled that the state’s law restricting firearm carry licenses to those age 21 and older is constitutional under the Second Amendment.
The decision came in Commonwealth v. Thomson (SJC-13856), decided October 20, 2026. It arose from Mikai Thomson’s December 2021 arrest in Dorchester. Police stopped a car after it ran a red light. Thomson, then 20 and riding as a passenger, fled on foot and discarded a loaded 9mm semiautomatic handgun. |
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