“Republican lawmakers are caught between the powerful gun lobby and top Trump officials over the deadly shooting of Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti,” Axios reports.
“The GOP has a long, mutually beneficial history with influential Second Amendment rights groups. The tragedy in Minneapolis is complicating their political messaging.”
“You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. It’s a very unfortunate thing.”
— President Trump, speaking to reporters.
“A number of Republicans have criticized Alex Pretti—who was killed by a federal Border Patrol agent Saturday—for carrying a gun during protest activity,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“They are facing pushback from an unlikely quarter: gun-rights groups that traditionally have largely sided with the GOP.”
“The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared skeptical of the constitutionality of a Hawaii law that sharply restricts where people can carry firearms — a case that may offer a strong indication of how far the justices will go in their push to loosen restrictions on guns,” the Washington Post reports.
“The Justice Department is considering loosening a slate of gun regulations as it seeks to bolster support from ardent Second Amendment advocates,“ the Washington Post reports.
“Some of the changes are expected to ease restrictions on the private sale of guns and loosening regulations around shipping firearms.”
“Other changes to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regulations under consideration would change the types of firearms that can be imported and make licensing fees refundable. Officials are also expected to change the form required to purchase guns to have applicants list their biological sex at birth.”
The National Rifle Association “is suing its own charitable wing in federal court, alleging that the nonprofit NRA Foundation, which it founded in 1990, is unfairly using the NRA logo to attract a rival donor base and undercut it,” the Washington Post reports.
“The National Rifle Association is burning through its investment portfolio to pay its bills as legal perils increase and revenue from membership dues decline,” NOTUS reports.
“In 2024, the 154-year-old gun rights organization liquidated nearly $40 million worth of stock, fixed-income securities and other holdings. By the end of 2024, the NRA’s investment portfolio had shrunk to less than $33 million, down from more than $72 million the year before.”
“The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to take up a major new gun rights case focused on recent measures enacted in Hawaii that restrict where people with a license to carry a concealed handgun can bring their weapons,” NBC News reports.
“At issue are provisions of a law that requires people with concealed carry permits to seek permission to bring their weapons onto private properties that are otherwise open to the public unless the owner already allows it.”
Associated Press: Supreme Court will consider overturning Hawaii’s strict ban on guns on private property.
“It is legal to openly carry a gun on Utah’s public university and college campuses with very few exceptions,” the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
“It’s unknown if the shooter who fatally fired on conservative commentator Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University in Orem on Wednesday afternoon was openly carrying or had a concealed weapon, but both are technically allowed.”
“In the wake of the Minneapolis Catholic church shooting, senior Justice Department officials are weighing proposals to limit transgender people’s right to possess firearms,” CNN reports.
“Such a move would represent a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s fight against the rights of transgender Americans.”
Fox News host and former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) questioned stricter gun control legislation when he was in office and took money from the National Rifle Association, the HuffPost reports.
But live on air, in the wake of the deadly shooting in Minnesota, he appeared to have a change of heart: “We’re going to have a conversation of freedom versus protecting children… We’ve got to decide whether or not we want to live like this.”
“Washington DC’s top federal prosecutor says that her office will pursue the toughest criminal charges for arrests made in the Trump administration’s purported crime crackdown, even as the office softens enforcement of a DC law that makes it illegal to possess rifles and shotguns in the city,” CNN reports.
“The Trump administration has terminated more than half of all federal funding for gun violence prevention programs in the U.S., cutting $158 million in grants that had been directed to groups in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Baltimore,” Reuters reports.
“The Justice Department plans to slash the number of inspectors who monitor federally licensed gun dealers by two-thirds, sharply limiting the government’s already crimped capacity to identify businesses that sell guns to criminals,“ the New York Times reports.
“The move, part of the Trump administration’s effort to defang and downsize the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, comes as the department considers merging the A.T.F. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. It follows a rollback of Biden-era regulations aimed at stemming the spread of deadly homemade firearms, along with other gun control measures.”
“The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously blocked the Mexican government from proceeding with an unusual lawsuit that sought to hold major U.S. firearms manufacturers accountable for gun violence in that country,” the Washington Post reports.
“The justices reversed an appeals court ruling, saying Mexico had failed to show a close enough connection between guns made in the United States and drug cartel violence.”
“The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would not hear a major Second Amendment challenge to a Maryland law banning semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15. As is the court’s practice, its brief order gave no reasons,” the New York Times reports.
“The move, over the objections of three conservative justices, let the ban stand and reflected the court’s intermittent engagement with gun rights.”
The Hill: “But Justice Brett Kavanaugh sent a strong signal that he will provide that crucial fourth vote in a future case once the issue percolates more in the lower courts.”
Los Angeles Times: Supreme Court turns away a 2nd Amendment challenge to blue-state bans on assault weapons.
Time: “Like a lot of Democrats these days, Chris Murphy has been doing some soul searching. For years, the Connecticut Senator, who took office shortly after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, was one of the nation’s most outspoken advocates for tighter gun laws. Gun safety was so important, he argued, that supporting an assault-weapons ban should be mandatory for Democratic leaders.”
“Recently, Murphy has come to believe he was wrong. Not about tougher gun laws, but about trying to force all Democrats to adopt his position.”
Said Murphy: “I bear some responsibility for where we are today. I spent a long time trying to make the issue of guns a litmus test for the Democratic Party. I think that all of the interest groups that ended up trying to apply a litmus test for their issue ended up making our coalition a lot smaller.”
The Trump administration has decided to permit the sale of devices that enable standard firearms to fire like machine guns, a move that one person familiar with the matter said was “by far the most dangerous thing this administration has done” on gun policy, NBC News reports.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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