Gun Owners Foundation

On February 11, 2008, Gun Owners of America and Gun Owners Foundation, along with several other groups, filed an amicus curiae brief in the Supreme Court supporting the respondent in the D.C. gun ban case, District of Columbia, et. al., v. Dick Anthony Heller, No. 07-290.

The issue in this case is whether three D.C. Code provisions violate a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for private use in one's home. Under long-standing rules limiting its jurisdiction, the Court should not entertain the Solicitor General's invitation to assess the constitutionality of the whole array of the current federal firearms statutes. Nor, in response to Petitioners and the Solicitor General, should the Court craft a standard of review not supported by the text to permit "reasonable" gun control. Rather, the Court should apply a standard of review dictated by the words and principles embodied in the Second Amendment, as directed by America's founders.

According to its text, context, and historic setting, the Second Amendment protects an individual right to private possession and use of handguns in one's own home. The individual right to keep and bear arms is essential to a "well regulated militia" -- a self-bodying, self-governing association of people privately trained to arms, modeled after the colonial militia that took up their privately-owned firearms to defeat a tyrannical effort to confiscate their arms. In turn, a "well regulated militia" ensures the preservation of a "free state" by allowing all members of the American polity to exercise, if necessary, the sovereign right of the "people" to reconstitute their government. In order to ensure its purpose to preserve the people's liberties, the Second Amendment bans discriminatory legislation against classes of persons that, by nature, are rightful members of "the people." In order to ensure its means to defeat tyranny, the Second Amendment bans discriminatory legislation against firearms that are essential to a preserve those liberties. By discriminating against law-abiding D.C. citizens and against handguns, the D.C. Code provisions violate both of these standards and, therefore, unconstitutionally infringe upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Gun Owners Foundation filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in support of the State of Wyoming and Wyoming Attorney General Patrick J. Crank. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms ("BATF") argued that Wyoming Stat. Ann. § 7-13-1502(k), which provides for the expungement with regards to restoring firearms rights to a person convicted of the misdemeanor crime of domestic violence ("MCDV"), (a) is insufficient as an exemption from the NICS background check and (b) does not authorize the person eligible to purchase a firearm.

In a letter dated August 6, 2004, BATF advised the Wyoming AG that, after review of the Wyoming MCDV expungement statute, it had concluded that Wyoming law did not meet the federal "complete expungement" standard governing MCDV convictions, as set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(33). In response to BATF's final ruling against Wyoming's statute, Wyoming's AG filed a complaint against BATF in U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming as being "arbitrary and capricious, and in direct violation of federal law" and, therefore, in violation of 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). The district court ruled against the State, adopting BATF's interpretation of the disputed firearms statutes.

GOF's brief argued that the district court, contrary to relevant and controlling case law precedent, erroneously upheld BATF's ruling, because Congress has directly and unambiguously established that expungements of state criminal convictions are to be determined by state law, not by an overriding federal standard, and that BATF's ruling violates 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A).

By seizing a gun dealer's inventory, and subjecting those seized firearms to forfeiture, BATF has, in many cases, put gun dealers out of business, and in many others put those businesses in jeopardy of having to close their doors. Outraged by these tactics, GOF decided to do something about it. On July 4, 2007, in response to this practice and other BATF seizures of firearms, Gun Owners Foundation published BATF Firearm Civil Forfeiture Procedures and Policies: An Attorney's Guide. The guide is intended to provide a procedural overview for attorneys unfamiliar with civil forfeiture law as it applies to firearms, including what to expect from the BATF, and how to go about recovering seized assets. The Guide primarily contains practical insight into the sometimes arcane, and oftentimes complex and confusing, system which favors the BATF's persistent effort selectively to disrupt, and thereby, destroy law abiding firearms and ammunition dealers.

This is the official transcript of Len Savage's testimony on June 19, 2007 in the Albert Kwan case. Kwan was charged with possession of an unregistered machine gun and possession of an unregistered short-barreled rifle. A jury acquitted Kwan of the machine gun charge, and found him guilty on the short-barreled rifle charge.

In his testimony Savage established himself as a firearms expert in Federal Court and showed that the BATFE needed to spend a significant amount of time and effort to modify Kwan's M14 semi-automatic rifle so that it would function as a fully-automatic firearm. He also debunked the BATFE's "once a machine gun always a machine gun" regulation and listed several instances where the Firearms Technology Branch had made mistakes in classifying firearms. Finally, Savage explained how the BATFE could prosecute most gun owners for possession of an unregistered machine gun: given enough time, tools, and parts, any semi-automatic firearm can be converted to a fully-automatic firearm.

On May 25, 2007, Gun Owners Foundation filed a Brief Amicus Curiae in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit supporting the appeal of Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean. Counts four and five of the indictment charge the two with "Discharge of a Firearm in Relation to a Crime of Violence," which the Supreme Court has ruled is only a sentencing factor, not one of the three elements "using," "carrying," or "possessing" a firearm. See Harris v. United States, 536 U.S. 545 (2002).

Thus, the amicus brief asks the court to overturn the convictions of Ramos and Compean in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, on the ground that these two Border Patrol agents were each sentenced to 10 years in prison for committing a federal crime which does not exist. GOF was joined in the amicus brief by three Congressmen (Walter B. Jones, Virgil H. Goode, Jr. and Ted Poe) who have been outspoken in defense of Ramos and Compean, and three other nonprofit organizations.

On June 18, 2007, Congressman Walter Jones addressed the U.S. House of Representatives about the Ramos and Compean case, in particular discussing the amicus brief filed by Congressman Jones, Gun Owners Foundation and others in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Congressman Jones explained how the agents were convicted of a crime which Congress never enacted into law. The Congressman has asked the House Judiciary Committee to investigate the matter and to ensure that justice be done

GOF filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Watson v. United States, asking the court to re-establish the common law doctrine of strict construction of criminal statutes, an historic legal principle mandating that, where two or more interpretations of a statute are possible, the court must choose the one most restrictive against the government. The modern shift away from strict construction results in prosecutorial abuse and convictions, as demonstrated by the Watson case, where defendant Watson was convicted of "use of a firearm" although he simply had received the firearm in exchange for drugs. While the immediate issue in this case concerned a narrow question of statutory interpretation, it has significant implications for gun owners generally. If a criminal statute can be broadly construed without regard to the ordinary meaning of a word, then statutes applying to gun ownership can be similarly extended by the government to restrict our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

GOF and 11 other nonprofit organizations called on the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm a federal district court ruling that the electioneering communications provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) are unconstitutional as applied. Electioneering communications prevent organizations like GOA from even mentioning the name of Congressmen in targeted broadcast issue advertisements. The case, Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life (No. 06-969), is the first as-applied challenge to BCRA to be argued before the Supreme Court. Importantly, the coalition also asked the Supreme Court to revisit its prior holdings in Buckley v. Valeo and McConnell v. FEC based on their overlooking of the people's Freedom of the Press.

On August 18, 2006, GOF filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. District Court for the State of Wyoming on behalf of the State of Wyoming, and the Wyoming Attorney General, Patrick J. Crank.

The brief was submitted in opposition to a BATF ruling that a Wyoming concealed carry permit based on a Montana criminal background check is not sufficient to allow an FFL dealer to transfer a firearm without obtaining a current federal National Instant Criminal Background Check. BATF objected to a provision in Wyoming law that permits an expungement of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence so that it cannot be reviewed by the Wyoming Attorney General in conducting a criminal background check before issuing a concealed carry permit, while allowing the record to be maintained for use for other purposes. At stake in this case is the federalist principle that the states, not the federal government, have the primary responsibility to govern firearms use and ownership.

Gun Owners of America Founder Sen. H.L. Richardson (Ret.) actually authored the California state law that made this gun ban illegal to enact.