<div>
Controversial internet celebrity and &#8220;looksmaxxer&#8221; Clavicular avoided jail time after allegedly shooting an alligator in Florida earlier this year.
The 20-year-old livestreamer, whose real name is Braden Peters, was <a href="https://ktar.com/arizona-news/clavicular-arrested-scottsdale/5819599/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">taken</a> into custody on February 7 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Peters was later charged with multiple offenses, including two felony counts, according to court records reviewed online. Clavicular faced nearly eight years in prison for the offenses, which included allegations that he shot an already-dead alligator in the Florida Everglades.
But Clav will live to mog another day, thanks to a plea deal he struck late Friday. A judge agreed to sentence Clavicular to six months&#8217; probation, during which time he must perform 30 hours of community service and complete a firearm safety course. If he serves his sentence without issue, his charges will be stricken from the record, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/us/clavicular-plea-deal-alligator-shooting.html">according</a> to the New York Times.
Clavicular rose to fame thanks to his near-constant livestreams, which broadcast every aspect of his life to the internet. Much of his content centers around &#8220;looksmaxxing,&#8221; a niche internet trend popular among young men who will go to great lengths to improve their physical appearance. &#8220;Looksmaxxers&#8221; have captivated the internet with their unique argot, a lexicon of extremely-online slang and portmanteaus of ordinary words with suffixes like &#8220;mogged&#8221; and &#8220;maxxing,&#8221; which signify embarrassment and commitment to a practice, respectively.
Clavicular has admitted to using methamphetamine to stay skinny and &#8220;bonesmashing,&#8221; a practice in which an individual lightly fractures his jaw bones, in the hope that they will heal more defined.
</div>
<div class="gmail_signature" dir="ltr" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>
During an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8qj9RNA938" target="_blank" rel="noopener">interview</a> with Daily Wire host Michael Knowles, Peters said, “I do meth, yeah. Meth is very similar to … Adderall, but it’s got a little bit better psychoactive benefits … stimulants cause appetite suppression.” When pressed on why he was doing meth despite its negative effects, he replied, “I have enough willpower to be able to taper off of meth.”
</div>
</div>
</div>

Clavicular

Probation-Maxxing: Clavicular Avoids Brutal Sentencemogging From Florida Judge

Florida

Guns

Jail

In a direct assault on the constitutional rights of law-abiding Virginians, Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger signed a sweeping package of gun control measures, including a ban on commonly owned semi-automatic firearms and standard-capacity magazines.
Spanberger signed the legislation into law on Thursday, criminalizing the purchase, sale, manufacture, and importation of the AR-15 — the most popular rifle in America — along with a wide range of semi-automatic handguns and shotguns. The National Rifle Association responded immediately, filing a state lawsuit to block these unconstitutional mandates before the ink could even dry.
“Governor Spanberger has once again proven she has no concern for the right to keep and bear arms,” the NRA <a href="https://www.nraila.org/articles/20260514/virginia-spanberger-doubles-down-on-semi-auto-ban-nra-doubles-down-on-lawsuits">stated</a>.
While the governor attempted to frame her last-minute amendments as &#8220;technical changes,&#8221; the NRA has denounced them as a transparent attempt to rebrand blatant violations of the Second Amendment.
When she campaigned for governor, Spanberger <a href="https://virginiaindependentnews.com/elections/virginia-governor-2025-spanberger-earle-sears-gun-violence-safety-legislation/#:~:text=We%20need%20to%20strengthen%20Virginia's,officers%20safe%2C”%20Spanberger%20said.">studiously avoided</a> calling for the kind of ban she just signed, saying instead, &#8220;We need to strengthen Virginia’s safe storage laws, prevent the sale of large-capacity magazines, and crack down on criminals who manufacture and possess illegal, untraceable ghost guns — efforts that would keep Virginia’s kids, families, and law enforcement officers safe.&#8221;
The NRA’s lawsuit, Santolla v. Katz, filed in the Washington County Circuit Court, argues that the bans violate the arms guarantee in Article I, Section 13 of the Virginia Constitution. Because the Virginia Supreme Court has historically interpreted this provision as parallel with the Second Amendment, the NRA contends the state is barred from prohibiting firearms and magazines that are in common use for lawful purposes.
Joining the NRA as plaintiffs are the Virginia Shooting Sports Association (VSSA), local firearm dealers, and several Virginia citizens.
In addition to the firearm and magazine bans, Spanberger signed measures that prohibit the possession of weapons in hospitals providing mental health services, raise the age to purchase certain firearms to 21, and implement restrictive &#8220;safe storage&#8221; requirements that dictate how citizens must keep arms in their own homes.
The governor’s office cited &#8220;combat use&#8221; as a justification for the ban, but the NRA reminded the commonwealth that these firearms are used daily by millions of Americans for self-defense, hunting, and competitive shooting.
As the law is set to take effect on July 1, 2026, the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action said it is prepared to pursue every legal avenue to ensure that the fundamental rights of Virginians are not trampled by a hostile executive.
Along with the state lawsuit, the NRA also filed a federal lawsuit, McDonald v. Katz, with the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation, and other individuals.

Abigail Spanberger Is Sworn In As First Female Virginia Governor

Democrat Governor Signs Sweeping Ban That Targets America’s Favorite Firearms

abigail spanberger

National Rifle Association (NRA)

Second Amendment

Virginia

A financial giant accused of debanking a gun store is facing increasing pressure over allegations it targeted conservative customers. 
Consumers&#8217; Research, a conservative organization, launched a &#8220;woke alert&#8221; campaign targeting Capital One on Thursday. Last week, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/read-it-the-message-a-financial-giant-sent-to-a-gun-shop-after-blocking-payment-access?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=11&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=READ+IT%3A+The+Message+A+Financial+Giant+Sent+To+A+Gun+Shop+After+Blocking+Payment+Access">reported</a> on a lawsuit filed by a Maryland gun store suing Capital One after claiming it blocked it from using its payment platform after identifying it as participating in a “prohibited industry.”
The <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/1036217722/Filed-Melio-CapitalOne-COMPLAINT">lawsuit</a> from the Rockville-based United Gun Shop says it received messages in 2025 and 2026 from Capital One and Melio Payments suggesting that they could not work with the firearms industry. The messages came after the gun store attempted to use Capital One’s payment platform, administered by Melio Payments, for multiple business-related transactions and bill payments.
“Capital One has been caught debanking law-abiding citizens again. It apparently isn’t enough for Capital One to fund and promote racist DEI, climate activism, and extreme transgender policies; the company is also debanking its own customers simply for holding views outside leftist ideology,” Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild told The Daily Wire. 
The “woke alert” from Consumers’ Research pointed to a lawsuit filed by the Trump organization accusing Capital One of cancelling more than 300 of the company’s accounts in 2021 after President Donald Trump’s first term ended.  
This lawsuit was noted in a recent <a href="https://ir-capitalone.gcs-web.com/node/61736/html">financial filing</a> from Capital One, noting it was dealing with “a civil lawsuit filed by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust and several affiliated corporate entities against Capital One.”
Additionally, the filing noted that it was “responding to demands and requests from various federal agencies” regarding “fair access to banking,” prompted by an executive order from Trump directing “government agencies to review financial institutions’ policies and practices for providing, maintaining, or discontinuing financial products or services to certain clients or potential clients.”
Capital One is one of the nine major financial entities being <a href="https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2025/nr-occ-2025-123.html">probed</a> by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
The “woke alert” flagged other gun industry owners who complained they had services cut off by Capital One, including the owner of a silencer company, who testified that he was unable to use their banking services to sell federally regulated suppressors. 
A <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190326020509/https://www.capitalone.com/legal/corporate/terms">previous version</a> of the company’s corporate terms of service contained a provision saying that “ammunition, firearms, or firearm parts or related accessories” were prohibited payments for corporate accounts. That provision has since been removed from the <a href="https://www.capitalone.com/digital/corporate-terms/">current terms</a> of service. 
Capital One has a history of pushing corporate activism, including announcing a $200 million investment back in October 2020 into “growth in underserved communities,” <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20260501160548/https:/www.capitalone.com/about/newsroom/impact-initiative-announcement/">focusing</a> on “black and Latinx” communities. 
“From law-abiding gun sellers to President Donald Trump&#8217;s own family, conservative Americans are being disgracefully treated like criminals because of Capital One&#8217;s discriminatory policies,” Hild said. “Every consumer needs to know that &#8216;woke&#8217; is what&#8217;s in Capital One&#8217;s wallet.&#8221;

Capital One Headquarters

Big Bank Caught In Conservative Crosshairs Over Gun Store Debanking Claims

Debanking Battle Heats Up After Gun Store Claims Against Capital One

Corporate America

debanking

Wokeness

Former Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax took his children&#8217;s horseback riding money to purchase the gun he used to kill their mother, according to court documents.
Divorce documents <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/04/16/us-news/justin-fairfax-was-a-raging-drunk-who-bought-gun-with-kids-horseback-riding-money-before-murder-suicide-court-docs/">obtained</a> by the New York Post reveal that Fairfax purchased the handgun in 2022 — the same year he left office after sexual assault allegations had severely damaged his political career — with cash that had been set aside for his children&#8217;s horseback riding lessons. Also in that same year, “heavy daily alcohol&#8221; use became part of his normal routine.
Fairfax went from being considered “a rising star” in politics to spending his days isolated in his home office surrounded by “empty wine bottles, trash and piles of dirty laundry.” The divorce documents allege he only came out “to get food or smoke cigarettes.”
His wife, Cerina Fairfax, was in the process of getting a divorce from her self-proclaimed “deadbeat” husband. Representing himself in court, Justin did not deny any of Cerina’s allegations against him. A judge ordered Justin to leave his shared home with Cerina by April 30, but 14 days before his scheduled eviction, Fairfax <a href="https://fcpdnews.wordpress.com/2026/04/16/detectives-investigate-domestic-related-murder-suicide-in-annandale/">killed</a> his wife. 
The couple’s teenage children were home at the time, and their son placed the 911 call after Fairfax had shot his wife in the basement and had gone upstairs to shoot himself in the head. Police <a href="https://x.com/FairfaxCountyPD">responded</a> to the house in Annandale, Virginia, “shortly after midnight.”
The shooting was not Fairfax’s first troubling incident involving the weapon. In 2022, he went to a public park with the firearm and a suitcase of clothes, where he was later found by his wife and her stepfather. Fairfax said he carried the weapon for protection after losing his security detail when his term ended. Around 1 a.m., his brother arranged for a mental health professional to speak with him in the park parking lot.
The Fairfaxes had been married for over twenty years when Cerina filed for divorce in July 2025. Court documents indicate that Justin’s downward spiral accelerated after he faced sexual assault allegations in 2019. According to the New York Post, after the scandal, Fairfax <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/04/16/us-news/justin-fairfax-couldnt-find-a-job-or-even-get-legal-clients-after-sex-assault-scandal-pal-says/?utm_campaign=nypost&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter">could not</a> find a job or attract legal clients despite opening a private legal practice out of his home. Cerina worked as a dentist.
Fairfax served one term as lieutenant governor from 2018 to 2022. In 2021, Fairfax ran for governor, but ultimately failed to win the Democratic primary. While Fairfax served as lieutenant governor, he pushed for gun control.

Justin Fairfax

Disgraced Democrat Used His Kids’ Money To Help Murder Their Mother

Crime

Murder

Politics

Suicide

The heroic ROTC cadets who stopped the terrorist at Old Dominion University in March described their experience beating and stabbing the attacker.
The shooter, former National Guard soldier Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, killed one and injured two in the March 12 attack, The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gunman-opens-fire-injures-two-at-old-dominion-university">reported</a>. Jalloh was pronounced dead when police arrived on the scene.
“There were students that were in that room that subdued him and rendered him no longer alive,” Dominique Evans, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Norfolk office, said at the time. “They basically were able to terminate the threat.”
Jalloh entered a classroom at Old Dominion and “nervously” asked if it was an ROTC class. Cadet Wesley Myers said Jalloh, who was previously convicted of supporting ISIS, shouted “Allahu Akbar” and opened fire on class instructor Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shah.
Shah later <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/decorated-military-hero-idd-as-victim-of-old-dominion-terrorist-attack">died</a> from his injuries.
“I saw my instructor kinda lunge at him, and when I got under the desk, I saw them together,” Cadet Jah-Ira Utarte said. “If he didn’t lunge at him, I wouldn’t be here right now. There’s a possibility he could’ve turned his gun and I could’ve been next.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BREAKING?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BREAKING</a>: For the first time, the ROTC students at Old Dominion University, who BEAT THE TERR*RIST TO DEATH WITHOUT GUNS are now telling their stories.
&#8220;He sho*ts a stray, it hits me, but I thought I could keep going&#8230; I get there and just start st*bbing him, as I&#8217;m st*bbing… <a href="https://t.co/LaMTF9Tvtv">pic.twitter.com/LaMTF9Tvtv</a>
— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) <a href="https://twitter.com/mattvanswol/status/2042684848414814572?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 10, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Cadet Louis Ancheta pulled out his pocket knife and ran up to Jalloh while Shah wrestled him.
“With my pocketknife, I open it, I run up, and as I’m running up, Colonel Shah lunges at the guy,” Ancheta said. “[Jalloh] shoots another stray, and it hits me. It really didn’t feel like it hit me. It felt like a graze. After that, I’m like, ‘I can keep on going.'&#8221;
Shah turned Jalloh around and gave Ancheta an opening to strike, the cadet said.
“I just go in there, and I start stabbing him,” Ancheta said. “As I’m stabbing him, other cadets jump in.”
Myers and Cadet Jeremy Rawlinson tried to wrest the gun away from Jalloh.
“We did what we tried to do to get the gun away from him, and he just wasn’t letting go,” Rawlinson said. “I just happened to have a knife on me at the time. Ancheta and I, we were, like, neutralizing the guy.”
As the cadets brought Jalloh to the ground, Myers wrenched away the gun, which only had one bullet left.
The cadets then switched to “combat care” to help Ancheta.
“It’s different when it’s not a mannequin, and it’s your friend,” Myers said.
The FBI is investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism. Director Kash Patel praised the cadets in a social media post March 12.
“The shooter is now deceased thanks to a group of brave students who stepped in and subdued him — actions that undoubtedly saved lives along with the quick response of law enforcement,” Patel <a href="https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2032183663350214858?s=20">said</a>.

Old Dominion

‘I Start Stabbing Him’: Student Heroes At Old Dominion Lay Out How They Took Down A Terrorist

Mass Shooting

Old Dominion University

Shooting

U.S.

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Virginia gun culture is in danger thanks to <a href="https://reason.com/2026/03/11/here-are-12-bills-democrats-just-passed-to-trample-gun-rights-in-virginia/">a wave of gun control legislation</a> just passed by the state legislature. Among other bills awaiting Governor Abigail Spanberger’s signature is a so-called <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/SB749">assault</a> <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/HB217">weapons</a> ban that, according to the <a href="https://www.nraila.org/articles/20260315/virginia-legislature-adjourns-from-2026-session-anti-gun-bills-on-governors-desk">National Rifle Association</a>, would “prohibit the future sale and transfer of virtually all modern firearms.”
While a provocative statement, it’s not incorrect. The crown jewel bill of Virginia Democrats’ crown jewel cause would ban the sale and importation of “assault firearms,” which is broadly defined as encompassing any centerfire rifle with a detachable magazine and one of several common features, such as a pistol grip, a collapsible stock, or a threaded barrel. Effectively, this covers all modern rifles chambered in something larger than 22LR, including commonly owned civilian rifles like the AR-15 and AK-47. It also bans the sale and importation of so-called high-capacity magazines — defined as having a capacity of over 15 rounds.
Other bills awaiting Spanberger’s assent include <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/SB115">restrictions on concealed carry permit reciprocity</a> with other states and legislation banning adults aged 18-21 from <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/SB643">possessing certain firearms</a>. Notably, there’s no grandfather clause, so any such young adults who legally purchased such firearms would become criminals overnight.
Collectively, these laws are “some of the nation’s most stringent restrictions on guns,” <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/mar/16/ten-gun-control-bills-waiting-virginia-gov-abigail-spanbergers/">as the Washington Times put it</a>, and are a massive change from Virginia’s status quo. It goes without saying that these laws are unlikely to be effective at addressing crime, namely because the vast majority of gun violence, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/476409/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-weapon-types-used/?srsltid=AfmBOooQWQ_9IS1yoXa4ENpmtwkxXZ6BqcKM5kZKHpMMOrcyHgqqYrq1">including mass shootings</a>, is <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/05/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-us/">committed with handguns</a>.
While Spanberger has not commented on these bills specifically, she openly <a href="https://abigailspanberger.com/issue/keeping-virginias-communities-safe/">supported similar measures</a> during her campaign and is widely expected to sign them. Assuming she does, the new laws will take effect on July 1, 2026. Predictably, Virginians (including yours truly) <a href="https://wset.com/news/local/gun-stores-see-sales-surge-as-assault-weapons-ban-heads-to-governor-march-2026">have reacted</a> with <a href="https://www.wdbj7.com/2026/03/12/virginia-gun-shop-sees-sales-surge-ahead-possible-assault-firearms-sales-ban/">a spending spree</a>, since any firearms purchased before then will be “grandfathered” in, as the proposed legislation doesn’t ban possession. Absent a major surprise, in several months, Virginia’s gun laws will look much more like my home state of Connecticut than they will like the commonwealth I moved to several years ago.
There is speculation that the assault weapons ban in particular <a href="https://reason.com/2026/03/11/virginias-impending-assault-firearm-ban-is-logically-and-constitutionally-dubious/">may be legally suspect</a>; I’ll leave brighter minds than mine to consider that. I’m concerned with another question: Why are Democrats going through the trouble of doing this? After all, <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/gun-ownership-by-state">nearly 45% of Virginians</a> live in a household with a gun, slightly higher than the 42% of Americans overall <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/08/16/for-most-u-s-gun-owners-protection-is-the-main-reason-they-own-a-gun/">who do so</a> and much higher than in most of the 10 states that have already passed bans on so-called assault weapons. Polling among Virginians <a href="https://www.roanoke.edu/news/rc_poll_politics_february_2026">has found</a> that the new gun control laws <a href="https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2026/02/26/virginia-poll-shows-widespread-disapproval-of-dems-gun-control-agenda-n1231708#google_vignette">are controversial</a>.
<a href="https://www.everytown.org/press/everytown-for-gun-safety-endorses-abigail-spanberger-former-moms-demand-action-volunteer-for-governor-of-virginia-announces-1-million-investment-in-virginia-governors-race/">Special interest groups</a> are a common answer, and not entirely the wrong one. But while the new laws might seem senseless, they do have a real purpose beyond making liberals feel better. Being a gun owner isn’t just about owning a gun: There is a distinctive set of norms and values that come along with it.
While it was <a href="http://www.americanheritage.com/content/america-gun-culture">first coined</a> in a pejorative way by the liberal historian Richard Hofstadter, this “gun culture” is very real. It <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-0520-6#">revolves around the reasons</a> people buy guns in the first place — be it target shooting, hunting, self-defense, or a belief in the necessity of an armed citizenry. Like with anything else, guns are often a vector for community <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-awkward-habit-that-pulled-me-out-of-the-loneliness-epidemic">in real life</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/us/gun-youtube-firearm-videos.html">online</a>.
While gun owners are not a political monolith, it’s easy to see why they’re disproportionately conservative. Gun ownership isn’t necessarily partisan, but it does necessarily invoke principles such as self-sufficiency and individualism that tend to point people in that direction.
That is what Virginia Democrats really have a problem with. Gun ownership carries along with it a set of norms and values that are, in their view, icky and low-class. It’s no wonder, then, that <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/08/16/for-most-u-s-gun-owners-protection-is-the-main-reason-they-own-a-gun/">Pew Research found</a> that 60% of Democrats who don’t currently own a gun could never see themselves having one; among Republicans, that figure was just 38%. And even among those who owned guns, Democrats consistently expressed more negative feelings about them than Republicans.
While the growth of Northern Virginia and the Richmond suburbs has given the state a blue tint, there are still a lot of conservatives and a lot of gun owners in Virginia. Slamming the door shut on potential future firearm enthusiasts minimizes the chance <a href="https://www.nssf.org/articles/since-2020-election-new-gun-owners-equal-population-of-florida/">too many more people</a> are introduced to and get passionate about their Second Amendment rights.
Democrats did back off on some of the more outlandish parts of the bill. Among other things, these included a <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/HB207">$500 tax on suppressors</a>, a <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/HB700">mandatory 5-day waiting period</a> after purchasing a firearm, <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/HB919">an 11% tax on ammo</a>, and a <a href="https://x.com/lyndseyfifield/status/2033611994222236061?s=46">widely publicized</a> provision that <a href="https://www.pilotonline.com/2026/03/17/virginia-general-assembly-sends-more-than-1200-bills-to-governor-heres-what-passed/">would have exempted themselves</a> from new <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/HB110">vehicle storage requirements</a>.
Still, absent a court ex machina, the Old Dominion is set to shift decisively to the blue state model of gun ownership. For those of us who have already gotten our guns, we’ll still have them. But for those Virginians who might wish to exercise their gun rights after July 1, well, too bad.
***
Stephan Kapustka is a writer at the American Spectator. Follow him on X <a href="https://x.com/SteveKapustka">@SteveKapustka</a>.

GettyImages-1331155684

How New Gun Laws Could Shut The Door On Future Gun Owners

Upstream

A convicted ISIS terrorist walked into a gun-free school zone and murdered a United States Army officer. This was a targeted attack on an educator of our future military service members. But Soros-backed Commonwealth&#8217;s Attorney Ramin Fatehi just stood at a microphone and blamed lawmakers for gun violence.
Now, I sit on the Virginia House of Delegates Criminal Subcommittee of the Courts of Justice Committee. I have watched Fatehi advocate year after year for soft-on-crime policies that lead to tragedies just like this.
The real question is why was Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a felon convicted of supporting ISIS, in possession of a firearm, especially in a gun free school zone? And why was Jalloh released 3 years early on an 11-year prison stint? These are the failures of soft-on-crime politicians more interested in policing federal ICE agents that protect their own citizens.
<div id="attachment_1058949" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1058949" class="size-large wp-image-1058949" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-12-at-3.57.15-PM-1024x447.png" alt="" width="1024" height="447" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-12-at-3.57.15-PM-1024x447.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-12-at-3.57.15-PM-300x131.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-12-at-3.57.15-PM-768x335.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-12-at-3.57.15-PM-1536x671.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/Screenshot-2026-03-12-at-3.57.15-PM.png 1576w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot: LiveNOW from FOX on YouTube</div>
That failure raises a larger question about what Virginia’s lawmakers are doing right now in Richmond.
<h3>Strangling The Second Amendment</h3>
The 2026 Virginia General Assembly session ends this week. When the gavel falls, Governor Abigail Spanberger will have on her desk a stack of gun bills unlike anything this Commonwealth has ever produced — not a single sweeping law, but a coordinated layering of restrictions designed to strangle the Second Amendment from every direction at once. Which gun you can buy. Where you can carry it. Whether the industry that makes it can survive being sued into submission. How you pass it on when you&#8217;re gone.
No single bill tells the whole story. The story is the stack — and what that stack adds up to is the systematic dismantling of our Second Amendment rights in Virginia.
<div id="attachment_548003" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-548003" class="size-large wp-image-548003" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/05/GettyImages-1347535587-864x576.jpg" alt="Semi-automatic pistols for sale on display at a gun shop." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/05/GettyImages-1347535587-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/05/GettyImages-1347535587-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/05/GettyImages-1347535587-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/05/GettyImages-1347535587-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/05/GettyImages-1347535587-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/05/GettyImages-1347535587-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/05/GettyImages-1347535587-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Zocha_K. Getty Images.</div>
<h3>What They Banned</h3>
Start with SB 749, the centerpiece. 
It criminalizes the import, sale, manufacture, purchase, and transfer of so-called &#8220;assault firearms&#8221; — semi-automatic centerfire rifles, pistols, and shotguns identified not by how they function, but by how they look. A folding stock. A pistol grip. A threaded barrel. Cosmetic features that have no bearing on rate of fire. The identical firearm with a wooden stock is legal. The one with a synthetic pistol grip is contraband after July 1. Firearms you already own before that date are grandfathered for possession — but you cannot sell them to another Virginian. You can sell to a dealer or transfer them out of state (but that’s a federal Class 5 Felony). And how does a family who wishes to move to Virginia with their firearms – are they not “importing” assault firearms? You can pass them by inheritance to family. Beyond that, your grandfathered rifle is a dead-end asset.
The magazine provision is worse.
SB 749 also bans the import, sale, transfer, or purchase of any magazine capable of holding more than 15 rounds. Possession of magazines you already own is not criminalized — but you cannot sell them or transfer them to any other Virginian under any circumstances. The only lawful exits for a grandfathered magazine are surrender to a federally licensed dealer or transfer out of state. Notably, while the bill creates an explicit inheritance exception for grandfathered firearms, it creates no parallel exception for grandfathered magazines. A son can inherit his father&#8217;s rifle under this bill. The 15+ round magazines that feed it are a different matter — there is no provision in the final enrolled text that permits passing them to an heir within Virginia. What you own today is frozen in place, and the law has made no arrangement for what happens to it when you are gone.
Background check data tells you what Virginians think about this: adjusted NICS checks in February 2026 jumped 55 percent over February 2025 as gun owners raced to the counters before the deadline.
<div id="attachment_65181" style="width: 973px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-65181" class="size-full wp-image-65181" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2019/11/Remington.jpg" alt="STOKESDALE, NC - MARCH 26: A Remington 700 hunting rifle, a Remington 1100 shotgun and a Remington R1 Enhanced model 1911 pistol are seen for sale at Atlantic Outdoors gun shop on March 26, 2018 in Stokesdale, North Carolina. Founded in 1816, Remington is one of America's oldest gun and ammunition manufacturers which now has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection partially due to an estimated $950 million in debt." width="963" height="645" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2019/11/Remington.jpg 963w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2019/11/Remington-300x201.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2019/11/Remington-768x514.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 963px) 100vw, 963px" />Photo by Brian Blanco/Getty Images</div>
<h3>What They Banned You From Carrying</h3>
The ban on future purchases was not enough. SB 727 — passed both chambers and headed to the Governor — prohibits carrying these same broadly defined &#8220;assault firearms&#8221; on any public street, road, alley, sidewalk, right-of-way, or park. The bill strips concealed handgun permit holders of any exemption, even though those permit holders have carried legally for years without incident.
The practical effect in much of Virginia — in the rural Southwest, in the Shenandoah Valley, in communities where the nearest deputy might be thirty minutes away — is that the firearm most commonly chosen for home and property defense can no longer lawfully accompany you beyond your front door.
<h3>What They Did to the Industry</h3>
SB 27 and HB 21 gut the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act at the state level. They create a Virginia cause of action against firearms manufacturers, distributors, and retailers based on a vague &#8220;responsible conduct&#8221; standard. There is no clear definition of what responsible conduct requires — which is the point. Ambiguity is the weapon. The goal is not to compensate real victims. It is to make the cost of doing business in Virginia high enough that manufacturers and dealers either comply with whatever standard the next attorney general invents or exit the market entirely. You cannot exercise a right the industry has been sued out of existence.
<h3>What They Did to Home Gunsmiths</h3>
HB 40 makes building, importing, selling, transferring, or possessing an unserialized firearm, including pieces of an unassembled build, a Class 5 felony — punishable by up to ten years in prison. The bill reaches unfinished frames and receivers. Home gunsmithing has a tradition in this country as old as the Republic itself. Under HB 40, it would now be a felony in Virginia.
<h3>The Layer They Almost Added</h3>
Several additional bills survived crossover before stalling or being amended in the final days. A permit-to-purchase scheme would have required Virginians to obtain a government-issued license from the State Police before buying a handgun. Who knows what kind of barriers they could create in the name of “safety.” A vehicle storage bill would have criminalized a firearm left in a car under vague standards. A public carry ban on the House side mirrored SB 727 with even broader definitions. An age prohibition would have barred adults under 21 from purchasing handguns or assault firearms entirely.
Some of these did not survive in their original form. Others will return. The direction of travel is not ambiguous. I’ve been here long enough to see them again and again from the relentless Left.
<div id="attachment_372227" style="width: 1000px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-372227" class="size-large wp-image-372227" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/04/Gun-Shop-990x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, USA - MARCH 17: Weapons on display at a gun shop in Washington, DC, United States as gun and ammunition sales in the U.S. have skyrocketed as the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic spread across the country." width="990" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/04/Gun-Shop-990x576.jpg 990w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/04/Gun-Shop-300x175.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/04/Gun-Shop-768x447.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/04/Gun-Shop.jpg 1012w" sizes=" (max-width: 990px) 100vw, 990px" />Yasin Ozturk / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</div>
<h3>What This Actually Is</h3>
Consider the cumulative picture. You cannot purchase the most popular class of semi-automatic firearms in America after July 1. Magazines over 15 rounds are contraband — you can keep what you have, but can barely use what is now monetarily valueless. You cannot carry these firearms publicly even with a concealed handgun permit. The dealer who sells them faces open-ended civil liability under a standard no one can define. The manufacturer who builds them faces the same. Home building is a felony. It is a complete dismantling of the firearms industry. Death by a thousand tiny, deceitful infringements on our constitutional rights.
At what point does regulation become intentionally burdensome to the detriment of an industry the controlling party despises? Take fossil fuels, for example. How many green energy policies can you put on a coal-fired power generation plant before it’s no longer economically feasible to continue operation? At what point does the layering of burden after burden, and infringement after infringement, become a weaponized strategy rather than a policy choice?
House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore warned on the floor that banning firearms in common use among millions of law-abiding Americans invites a constitutional reckoning. He is right. Gun rights organizations have already promised litigation the moment Spanberger signs the bill into law.
In the meantime, Virginians who did nothing wrong — they bought their rifles legally, they hold concealed handgun permits, they have never committed a crime in their lives — are watching their God-given constitutional rights be stripped away layer by layer by a majority that answers to Northern Virginia.
That is the arithmetic of 2025&#8217;s election results. Governor Spanberger is expected to sign. When she does, every Virginian in every competitive district — every community that believed a Democratic majority in the House, Senate, and the Governor’s Mansion would exercise any restraint — should ask a simple question: Is this what you voted for?
Sure, Democrats aren’t “coming for your guns.”
They’re just making sure they are rendered completely useless under the law.
* * *
Del. Wren Williams represents Virginia&#8217;s 47th House District (Patrick County and surrounding area). He is an attorney and a member of the House Republican Caucus.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Abigail Spanberger Sworn In As Virginia Governor

Virginia’s Gun Crackdown Ignores The Real Failure: Releasing An ISIS-Linked Felon

Democrats

Gun Laws

Gun Rights

On Tuesday, there was a hearing at the Supreme Court regarding a law in Hawaii that bans guns from being carried into supermarkets, gas stations, and other public locations without the property owner’s permission.
Instead of property owners issuing a statement saying, “You can&#8217;t come in here with a gun,” the idea would be that you wouldn&#8217;t be able to walk in with a gun unless the shop owner gives you explicit permission.  
This is the opposite of how the Second Amendment is supposed to work. It is quite possible under the Second Amendment for people to say, “You can&#8217;t come into my establishment carrying a gun,” but this argument would reverse that presumption.
Justice Samuel Alito said the state was relegating the Second Amendment to second-class status.
The Supreme Court ruled that people have a constitutional right to carry outside the home for self-defense in 2022, but now lawmakers are attempting some sort of back door to prevent people from doing that. The law is similar to restrictions that already exist in California, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey as well.  
A truly bizarre moment in the hearing came when Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — who&#8217;s become infamous for making dumb comments in the middle of oral arguments — decided that she was going to talk about the “Black Codes.” The codes were legitimately created by racists in order to prevent black people from owning guns. She was talking about them as precedent.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
SCOTUSBlog <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/court-to-hear-oral-argument-on-law-banning-guns-on-private-property/">noted</a> the argument against the law made by its opponents:
<blockquote>In upholding Hawaii’s ban, they say, the court of appeals relied on two laws, neither of which is analogous. The first was a 1771 New Jersey law that barred poaching on lands that were closed to the public. But that law, the challengers wrote, “simply codified the American rule that hunters could hunt on unimproved lands not their own, while improved lands remained off limits. That is a trespass law,” they concluded, rather than a law that – like Hawaii’s – generally prohibits “carrying firearms on any and all private property without advance express consent.” 
And the second, the challengers continue, was an 1865 Louisiana law, enacted as part of that state’s Black Codes to restrict the rights of formerly enslaved people, that barred the carrying of guns on “premises or plantations” – that is, private property – without the owner’s consent.</blockquote>
Jackson said, “The fact that the Black Codes were, at some later point, determined, themselves, to be unconstitutional, doesn&#8217;t seem to me to be relevant to the assessment that Bruen is asking us to make. So, can you say more about that?”
Sarah Harris, the U.S. Principal Deputy Solicitor General, responded, “Absolutely. Black Codes were unconstitutional from the moment of their inception, because they are pretextual laws that are designed to ensure that newly-freed slaves are returned to a condition of sharecropping.”
Jackson: “Okay, let me stop you there. They were not deemed unconstitutional at the time that they were enacted. They were part of the history and tradition of the country. And when we have a test now that&#8217;s asking us to look at what people were doing back then, I don&#8217;t understand why they should be excluded.”
Harris: “Because they are outliers. They are, by definition, unconstitutional.”
Jackson: “Afterwards, not at the time. And if the test says what is happening at the time tells us what’s constitutional for this purpose, why aren’t they in?”
Harris: “Respectfully, a law is always unconstitutional from its inception.”
Jackson: “So the history doesn&#8217;t matter. We shouldn’t care about the history, then.”
Jackson seems to be making the argument that when Dred Scott was ruled unconstitutional, the reversal of the decision doesn’t mean that Dred Scott was ever wrong.
This is a truly bizarre agreement she’s making.
She’s implying that Plessy v. Ferguson, which said that segregation under the Equal Protection laws was fully legal, was good constitutional law, and only later was reversed. That means that if there was a subtextual or secondary part of that law, we should look to it as good law even though the Supreme Court’s ruling was a bad decision.
This is absolutely incoherent and nonsensical.

The U.S. Supreme Court Poses For Official Group Photo

Justice Jackson Defends Racist Black Codes As Constitutional History

Ben Shapiro

Blacks

Hawaii

Ketanji Brown Jackson

Leftists

Opinion

Supreme Court

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that a California ban on openly carrying firearms violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, giving gun owners a major win in the deep blue state.
In a 2-1 <a href="https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2026/01/02/24-565.pdf">ruling</a>, the appeals court partially sided with a California gun owner Mark Baird, who sued over California&#8217;s ban on openly carrying a firearm in counties with more than 200,000 residents. The law, which went into effect as an &#8220;urban open-carry ban,&#8221; effectively prohibited around 95% of California&#8217;s population from carrying a gun in public.
U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, said in the ruling that &#8220;historical record makes unmistakably plain that open carry is part of this Nation’s history and tradition.&#8221;
&#8220;It was clearly protected at the time of the Founding and at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. There is no record of any law restricting open carry at the Founding, let alone a distinctly similar historical regulation,&#8221; the judge stated. &#8220;California’s failure to satisfy its burden to present evidence of a relevant historical tradition of firearm regulation is dispositive with respect to California’s urban open-carry ban.&#8221;
The open-carry ban was <a href="https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-defends-commonsense-gun-law-prevents-illegal-gun">defended</a> by California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta, who has pushed for gun control at the state and federal levels.
<a class="c-link c-link--focus-visible c-link--underline" href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial&amp;utm_campaign=christmas&amp;utm_content=christmassale25" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial&amp;utm_campaign=christmas&amp;utm_content=christmassale25" data-sk="tooltip_parent">Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships</a>
In the ruling, VanDyke also said that California&#8217;s open-carry ban could not stand under the Supreme Court&#8217;s landmark decision in 2022 in New York State Rifle &amp; Pistol Association v Bruen, which found that Americans have the right to carry firearms in public. The judge also noted how most U.S. states generally allow for open carry, a list that included California until the state enacted its urban open carry ban in 2012.
&#8220;In doing so, California joined a tiny minority of states to have adopted such severe restrictions on open carry. In fact, California is the only state in the Ninth Circuit that has entirely banned open carry for the overwhelming majority of its citizens,&#8221; VanDyke wrote.
VanDyke was joined by Kenneth Lee, another Trump-appointed judge, in ruling against the California law. The three-judge panel ruled against Baird&#8217;s challenge of licensing requirements in counties with fewer than 200,000 residents.
Friday&#8217;s ruling comes after a 2023 decision from a district court judge who rejected a legal challenge to California&#8217;s open carry ban. Senior U.S. Circuit Judge N. Randy Smith, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, dissented in part, arguing that the appeals court &#8220;should have affirmed the district court.&#8221;

Shooting club

SECOND AMENDMENT WINS: Appeals Court Shoots Down ‘Unconstitutional’ California Open-Carry Ban

2nd Amendment

9th Circuit

California

Courts

The Department of Justice is suing Washington, D.C.’s police department over the city’s firearms laws, saying they incriminate legal gun owners.
The lawsuit argues that it goes against the Second Amendment for the capital city to ban AR-15 rifles and other types of firearms, according to a <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-district-columbia-unconstitutional-ban-semi-automatic-firearms">press release</a>. Specifically, the DOJ alleges that the local police department “routinely arrest[s] law-abiding citizens for possessing firearms that are protected under the Second Amendment but not registerable in D.C.”
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement that the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/media/1421731/dl" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit</a> is part of the DOJ’s new Second Amendment Section, saying it “underscores our ironclad commitment to protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.”
“Washington, DC’s ban on some of America’s most popular firearms is an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment — living in our nation’s capital should not preclude law-abiding citizens from exercising their fundamental constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”
Gun owners in the district are required to register their firearms through the Metropolitan Police Department, and the lawsuit points out that people cannot register “semi-automatic rifles,” which the DOJ argues incriminates people who “possess these firearms in the home for lawful purposes.”
“If a law-abiding citizen possesses a Second Amendment-protected firearm that is not registerable in D.C. in the home for the lawful purpose of self-defense, that individual faces anything from an administrative fine to a criminal misdemeanor conviction punishable by up to one year in jail and a $2,500 fine,” the lawsuit reads.
Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division, Harmeet K. Dhillon, said in a statement that “The newly established Second Amendment Section filed this lawsuit to ensure that the very rights D.C. resident Mr. Heller secured 17 years ago are enforced today — and that all law-abiding citizens seeking to own protected firearms for lawful purposes may do so.”
<a class="c-link c-link--focus-visible c-link--underline" href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial&amp;utm_campaign=christmas&amp;utm_content=christmassale25&amp;_gl=1*vdwpap*_gcl_au*MTYzODg4ODI4OS4xNzY1ODA4NTE2*_ga*NDM4MjI1MTA1LjE3NTc5NTYzMzI.*_ga_CZKR9ZYKJP*czE3NjY0MTUwMTMkbzM0OSRnMSR0MTc2NjQxNTAxNiRqNTkkbDAkaDA." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial&amp;utm_campaign=christmas&amp;utm_content=christmassale25" data-sk="tooltip_parent">Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships</a>
The lawsuit comes as federal agents and the National Guard continue to patrol the streets of D.C., following President Donald Trump’s August order to crack down on crime. MPD Chief Pamela Smith resigned from her position amid accusations from the Republican-led House Oversight Committee that she “deliberately manipulated crime data.”
“Let’s be really clear about one thing: Never would I, never will I ever compromise my integrity for a few crime numbers,” Smith said last week, according to <a href="https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/dc-police-chief-forgives-haters-fiery-farewell-speech/4032025/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NBC 4 Washington</a>. Interim Police Chief Jeffrey Carroll now leads the department.
The Metropolitan Police Department told The Daily Wire it “does not comment on pending litigation.” The mayor’s office and the city attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Pamela Smith

Justice Department Sues D.C. Over ‘Unconstitutional’ Gun Laws

firearms

justice department

Washington DC

Depending on the outcome of New Jersey’s gubernatorial race on Tuesday, gun owners in the state can prepare to breathe easier or bunker down for another four years of hostility. 
The race pits Republican Jack Ciattarelli, who has promised to defend the Second Amendment, against Mikie Sherrill, who is backed by a plethora of anti-gun groups. The winner will appoint New Jersey’s next attorney general, who has a considerable role in enforcing the state’s gun laws and defending the Second Amendment. 
Matthew Platkin, New Jersey’s current attorney general, has consistently pushed for gun control after his appointment four years ago by outgoing Democratic Governor Phil Murphy. In New Jersey, the attorney general is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate. 
During his time as attorney general, Platkin has sued numerous gun manufacturers, supported a wide-ranging ban on carrying guns in public places, and defended the state’s strict gun laws. 
Platkin has defended the state’s ban on AR-15s and ammunition magazines that carry more than ten rounds. The case is <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69068398/association-of-new-jersey-rifle-and-pistol-clubs-i-v-attonrey-general-new/">currently</a> before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Trump administration has filed a brief in support of the Second Amendment groups that challenged the law. 
“Although such rifles and magazines are subject to reasonable regulations that are consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, the complete bans at issue here are unconstitutional,” the Justice Department argued in a recent brief. 
Platkin has also supported bans on so-called “assault weapons” in other jurisdictions, and he co-led a brief in September <a href="https://www.mass.gov/news/ag-campbell-co-leads-coalition-to-support-assault-weapons-ban-in-cook-county-illinois">defending</a> the ban in Cook County, Illinois, on AR-15s. In May 2024, he took action to <a href="https://www.njoag.gov/ag-platkin-leads-states-in-defending-massachusetts-gun-laws/">defend</a> similar gun control laws in Massachusetts. 
The New Jersey Democrat also went on the offensive, accusing gun manufacturer Glock of making a semi-automatic pistol that can be illegally modified into being fully automatic. 
“For decades, Glock has knowingly sold weapons that anyone with a screwdriver and a YouTube video can convert into a military-grade machine gun within a matter of minutes,” Platkin <a href="https://www.nj.com/essex/2024/12/nj-sues-to-stop-sale-of-glock-handguns.html">said</a> in December 2024.
Platkin has also <a href="https://www.nj.com/news/2023/01/nj-wanted-to-be-able-to-sue-gunmakers-but-a-federal-judge-says-law-may-be-unconstitutional.html">supported</a> the suing of gun manufacturers under “public nuisance&#8221; law and laws <a href="https://x.com/NewJerseyOAG/status/1829670601574822394">banning</a> those under the age of 21 from owning guns. Additionally, he was “thrilled” after the courts <a href="https://newjerseymonitor.com/2025/09/10/federal-judges-uphold-new-jersey-law-restricting-guns-in-sensitive-places/">upheld</a> a law that banned carrying guns in almost every public place. 
Ciattarelli has <a href="https://www.jack4nj.com/issues">promised</a> to replace Platkin on his first day as governor with an attorney general “who respects all constitutional rights, including Second Amendment rights, and will review all legislation and policies for constitutional flaws to remedy or repeal them, and reevaluate the state’s position in pending lawsuits by citizens challenging state laws as unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.”
Additionally, he said he will veto any legislation that infringes on the Second Amendment. 
On the other hand, Sherrill, who has been <a href="https://www.everytown.org/press/everytown-for-gun-safety-action-fund-endorses-mikie-sherrill-for-new-jersey-governor/">endorsed</a> by the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety, has <a href="https://sherrill.house.gov/media/press-releases/statement-by-rep-mikie-sherrill-on-ar-15-ruling">promised</a> to fight “until we fully ban assault weapons” and “require universal background checks for gun purchases.”
While New Jersey is seen as a solid blue state, recent polls have shown the gap between Ciattarelli and Sherrill tightening.

MixCollage-04-Nov-2025-12-52-PM-2816

The Second Amendment Hangs In The Balance In The New Jersey Governor’s Race

The Second Amendment Is On The Ballot In The New Jersey Governor’s Race

Elections

Jack Ciattarelli

mikie sherrill

New Jersey

In every country where firearms have been banned, there&#8217;s been an &#8220;inciting incident&#8221; that&#8217;s been used to justify the crackdown. And very often, this &#8220;inciting incident&#8221; is either overblown, manufactured, or misconstrued in some way. In Canada back in 2022, for example, Justin Trudeau used a mass shooting in the United States — specifically, the shooting at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas — to justify a national ban on handgun sales in Canada.
Yes, he used a shooting in a foreign country, which was committed with a rifle, to justify a ban on handguns in Canada. And of course, Canadians went along with it. They didn&#8217;t even complain because, after all, they&#8217;d been conditioned, over many years, to accept an increasing number of restrictions on their right to own firearms. Bit by bit, they allowed the government to whittle away their rights. So eventually, when it came time for Justin Trudeau to suspend handgun sales entirely, based on a pretext that was obviously ridiculous, everyone just kind of rolled over. We&#8217;ve seen similar stories all over the world, in places like Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and so on.
Every conservative — everyone who wants the United States to continue to exist as a functional country, where all of these other nations have failed — has to be mindful of similar efforts to undermine our Second Amendment rights here at home. We have to pay attention when government officials attempt to use some kind of fake &#8220;inciting incident&#8221; to suspend our right to possess firearms. And we certainly have to pay attention when these efforts gain traction — when they appear to be working.
That&#8217;s the case right now. Lawsuits and political pressure by various states — particularly California — have successfully intimidated the weapons manufacturer Glock into dismantling virtually its entire product line. One of the most popular handgun manufacturers in the world, with probably the most recognizable brand, has been beaten into submission.
This is a story that hasn&#8217;t received anywhere near the attention it should be receiving. It&#8217;s obviously the first domino among many. If Glock doesn&#8217;t reverse this decision — if Democrats win this fight — then many, many more dominoes will fall in short order. Just like we saw in Canada, once you give these people any ground whatsoever, they will walk all over you.
So let&#8217;s begin with the &#8220;inciting incident&#8221; of this particular power grab. It was the worst mass shooting in the history of Sacramento, according to the local media, and it took place in April 2022. Several shooters were involved, as part of some kind of gang warfare. Six people were fatally wounded. Twelve others were injured.
One of the men who was apprehended was named Smiley Martin (the brother of Dandrae Martin, another suspect in the case). Smiley Martin was found in possession of a Glock 19 handgun with a &#8220;switch&#8221; attached to it, which is a device that enables it to fire rapidly, like a machine gun. Switches are illegal, but they can be obtained very easily or created with a 3D printer.
And it was determined that Smiley was one of the main shooters in this particular incident. Watch: 
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 Downtown Sacramento" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4FhuYdV4phc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
You heard in that report that Smiley Martin had a very long criminal record prior to this shooting. But they don&#8217;t explain why he was allowed out of prison, if that&#8217;s the case. Nor do they provide more detail on what exactly Smiley Martin did when he committed his other crimes. 
But that&#8217;s a pretty big part of the story. So here&#8217;s <a href="https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-shootings-prisons-arrests-f713eff2a31b66e5740eb96f60392baa">The Associated Press</a>, with some more background.
<blockquote>A suspect arrested in connection with last weekend’s mass shooting outside bars in Sacramento served less than half his 10-year sentence because of voter-approved changes to state law that lessened the punishment for his felony convictions and provided a chance for earlier release. Smiley Allen Martin was freed in February after serving time for punching a girlfriend, dragging her from her home by her hair and whipping her with a belt, according to court and prison records. Those count as nonviolent offenses under California law, which considers only about two dozen crimes to be violent felonies — such as murder, rape, arson and kidnapping. &#8230; Proposition 57 credits include good behavior while behind bars, though corrections officials declined to release Martin’s disciplinary report.</blockquote>
If you follow my show or read my articles, you know this is all sounding very familiar. It&#8217;s similar to what happened in Kentucky, with the child killer Ronald Exantus. As we discussed, Exantus brutally murdered a young boy and assaulted his father (and the boy&#8217;s sister). But his crimes were deemed &#8220;nonviolent&#8221; under Kentucky law, so he was let out of prison after serving just a few years. Even though the parole board didn&#8217;t want to release Smiley Martin, they had no choice under the law — just like they had to release Ronald Exantus.
In this case, just like Ronald Exantus, Smiley Martin obviously committed violent offenses. He punched a woman and whipped her with a belt. But because these offenses are somehow considered &#8220;nonviolent&#8221; in California, under the law that was passed in 2016, Smiley Martin was allowed out of prison after serving a fraction of his sentence. And he then used that opportunity to commit a mass shooting.
So how has the government of California responded to this development? Have they suggested that maybe they should amend the law so that the word &#8220;nonviolent&#8221; doesn&#8217;t refer to crimes that are obviously violent? Have they suggested any changes whatsoever that would prevent violent felons from getting out of prison after serving less than half of their sentences?
You probably know the answer to that question. Democrats in California reacted to this mass shooting by pushing yet another law — one that will effectively ban all Glock handguns in the state. For many years, Glocks have had special restrictions in places like Canada and California. And now the government, in the wake of this mass shooting, has decided to go for a total ban. 
This is from a video posted by &#8220;<a href="https://x.com/fixingcali/status/1968266193808277561">Vince for California</a>,&#8221; the only account I&#8217;ve seen on X that has pieced all this together. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 CA Glocks" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uf-r0btKIq4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Yes, you heard that correctly. Government officials in California cited the mass shooting in Sacramento as proof that we need a new law banning Glocks. That&#8217;s not because there&#8217;s anything wrong with Glocks, by themselves. It&#8217;s because career criminals — overwhelmingly young black men who pose with their illegally modified Glocks on TikTok all the time, and who constantly commit violent felonies and then get out of jail in five seconds — might modify the Glock to make it more dangerous. Because this relatively small demographic is breaking the law, therefore the most popular handgun in the world should be outlawed in California. (Technically, you can keep your current Glock, but you can&#8217;t buy a new one.)
That&#8217;s what they&#8217;re saying. That&#8217;s their plan. And it&#8217;s working. It&#8217;s almost as if the entire reason they let these violent thugs out of prison is so that they can commit more crimes, which Democrats will then, in turn, use to justify more crackdowns on our civil liberties. This is from a local news station in California.
<blockquote>Glock handguns, among the most popular pistols on the market, will no longer be available for purchase in California starting July 1, 2026. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed into law AB 1127, which prohibits the sale of Glocks because a small part can be modified or replaced to convert the gun into an automatic weapon. Although illegal, this modification is becoming increasingly popular among lawbreakers. Tyler Thompson, a Glock dealer at Redding Guns, said the impending ban has left him with only one Glock in stock.</blockquote>
Along with this law (which was subsidized by Soros and Mark Zuckerberg), there have been various lawsuits filed against Glock by Democrats — including cities like Seattle and Chicago, and states like Minnesota and New Jersey — which essentially blame the manufacturer for illegal modifications that people make to their firearms. It&#8217;s like when Democrats blamed Toyota for supposedly making their cars too easy to steal.
For about a million reasons, conservatives should fight these laws (and these lawsuits) with everything they have. The NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation are doing their part, and filing lawsuits, but there needs to be a much bigger effort. For one thing, <a href="https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB1127/id/3209201">here&#8217;s the law</a> that California just passed.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-990593 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Legislative-Counsel-824x576.jpg" alt="" width="824" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Legislative-Counsel-824x576.jpg 824w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Legislative-Counsel-300x210.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Legislative-Counsel-768x537.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Legislative-Counsel.jpg 987w" sizes=" (max-width: 824px) 100vw, 824px" /></div>
Credit: LegiScan/California Assembly Bill 1127
The bill reads:
<blockquote>This bill would prohibit a licensed firearms dealer to sell, offer for sale, exchange, give, transfer, or deliver any semiautomatic machinegun-convertible pistol, except as specified. For these purposes, the bill would define “machinegun-convertible pistol” as any semiautomatic pistol with a cruciform trigger bar that can be readily converted by hand or with common household tools into a machine gun by the installation or attachment of a pistol converter, meaning any device or instrument that, when installed in or attached to the rear of the slide of a semiautomatic pistol, replaces the backplate and interferes with the trigger mechanism and thereby enables the pistol to shoot automatically more than one shot by a single function of the trigger.</blockquote>
Among other problems, this law is obviously unconstitutional. 
To be clear, it doesn&#8217;t apply only to Glocks, but also to any handgun with a &#8220;cruciform trigger bar.&#8221; 
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-990597 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Trigger-Bar-1024x428.webp" alt="" width="1024" height="428" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Trigger-Bar-1024x428.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Trigger-Bar-300x125.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Trigger-Bar-768x321.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Trigger-Bar.webp 1280w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></div>
Credit: us.Glock.com
Here&#8217;s what that looks like. Some Smith &amp; Wesson firearms, along with some firearms from Shadow Systems and FMK Firearms, also have &#8220;cruciform trigger bars.&#8221; And yes, it&#8217;s true that, if they revamp their entire product lineup, Glock can get rid of these.
But Glock shouldn&#8217;t have to do that. Nor should any of these other companies. The Supreme Court has already held — correctly — that under our Constitution, Americans can own handguns that aren&#8217;t unreasonably dangerous. And there&#8217;s nothing unreasonably dangerous about a Glock. It&#8217;s about as vanilla as handguns get. If a handgun suddenly becomes &#8220;unreasonably dangerous&#8221; because someone makes an illegal modification to it, then every handgun will instantly become &#8220;unreasonably dangerous.&#8221;
And of course, that&#8217;s what California has in mind. We all know that, no matter what changes Glock decides to make to its handguns, in order to comply with this law, it will never be enough. It&#8217;s possible to modify any handgun (or rifle) to shoot &#8220;full auto&#8221;, within the meaning of this law. Probably ten days after Glock changes its handguns to comply with this law, someone will come up with a switch for the new model. It&#8217;s not going to be difficult. Many firearms experts have already made that point.
This is clearly, unambiguously, the first major step in a larger effort by Democrats to ban handguns. The only appropriate response is to fight it, right now. There is no limiting principle here. It&#8217;s like saying it should be illegal to own a car, because car bombs exist. The fact that someone can come in after the fact and make a product more dangerous by committing a felony does not mean that we should ban the product.
But Glock isn&#8217;t fighting back on principle. They&#8217;re not running ads in California, pointing out that Gavin Newsom let this mass shooter out of jail early, or that California already outlaws switches, or that the mass shooter was a felon who shouldn&#8217;t have been allowed to possess a firearm in the first place, or that he had a high-capacity magazine that&#8217;s also illegal in California. Glock isn&#8217;t running 24/7 ads, which makes the extremely obvious point that California could solve its gun problem overnight by actually enforcing its existing laws and by punishing violent criminals.
Instead, Glock is caving. They&#8217;re punishing every law-abiding gun owner in the country. They just announced that they&#8217;re ditching Gen 5 and starting to make a whole new &#8220;V series&#8221; of handguns that are supposedly compliant with this new law. They just sent this marketing material around.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-990599 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/G3z3WslXMAAcQMi-460x576.jpeg" alt="" width="460" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/G3z3WslXMAAcQMi-460x576.jpeg 460w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/G3z3WslXMAAcQMi-240x300.jpeg 240w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/G3z3WslXMAAcQMi-768x961.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/G3z3WslXMAAcQMi.jpeg 1029w" sizes=" (max-width: 460px) 100vw, 460px" /></div>
Credit: us.Glock.com
It reads: &#8220;As part of GLOCK&#8217;s commitment to future innovations, we are making necessary updates to our product lines to align with upcoming offerings.&#8221;
So they don&#8217;t even mention why they&#8217;re doing this. They don&#8217;t demonstrate a shred of interest in defending Americans&#8217; Second Amendment rights or contesting this flagrant overreach by Democrats in California, New Jersey, Minnesota, and so on. They don&#8217;t even provide any indication as to whether this new &#8220;V series&#8221; will be compatible with Gen 5 parts, including performance triggers and so on. Nor do they explain how they can possibly make a handgun that&#8217;s impossible to turn into a machine gun, under the law passed in California. They&#8217;re just hoping for the best, I guess.
And meanwhile, where is the Republican Party on this? Has a single prominent Republican made an issue out of the fact that Democrats just strong-armed Glock into dismantling its entire product line? If so, I&#8217;m not aware of it.
This is a total capitulation. There&#8217;s no other way to understand what&#8217;s happening here. It&#8217;s capitulation on Glock&#8217;s part. And it&#8217;s capitulation on the part of our elected representatives.
That would be unforgivable in normal times. It&#8217;s especially egregious now, after we&#8217;ve seen — again and again, in country after country — where total capitulation leads. Glock&#8217;s decision is going to embolden Democrats to do exactly what Leftists have done in Canada, Australia, and so on. They didn&#8217;t release Smiley Martin from prison, or fund these massive new changes to the law, so that Glock would release slightly-altered versions of its existing handguns. They released Smiley Martin from prison, and they passed this law, so that no one can buy a handgun ever again. They want to disarm the entire country. That is their ultimate objective.
That&#8217;s always been their objective. And with this decision by Glock, without much fanfare, they&#8217;re one very important step closer to achieving it.

California Gov. Newsom Discusses State’s Economic Advancement And Growth

The Brazen Attack On Your Second Amendment Rights You Probably Haven’t Heard About

Gavin Newsom

Matt Walsh

Sacramento

Menu