Author: Sam Jacobs

Prior to 1968, most adults in the United States could purchase a firearm without state interference. Guns were available in local retail stores, as well as mail-order catalogs, and as long as you hadn’t been convicted of a felony and you had the funds, there weren’t any questions asked.

Things are different now. Depending on where in America you are and what type of gun you want to buy, there’s a good chance you’ll need to pass a NICS-mandated background check to complete your purchase.

Although many people hold a strong opinion for and against gun background checks, they’ve proven to be an integral part of the state’s gun control apparatus – and they don’t appear to be leaving anytime soon.

Since background checks are such a requirement for today’s gun enthusiasts, it’s important for gun owners (and those who may someday be gun owners) to understand everything they can, including how the current system works and how it came to be.

Continue reading “Gun Background Checks: How the State Came To Decide Who Can and Cannot Buy a Firearm”

It’s no secret that mainstream press coverage of gun ownership in the United States tends to be in favor of gun control – especially when those reporting on the topic are not firearm owners themselves. Journalists focus on how many people are killed by guns, how many children get their hands on improperly stored firearms, and how many deranged individuals go on shooting sprees.

This anti-gun news bias is widespread among the “urban elite” who have very little personal experience with guns and yet write for influential newspapers like The New York Times, Washington Post, etc. Despite this bias, law-abiding private citizens owning guns does have positive impacts on American society that often go unreported – many of which are significant.

Continue reading “American Gun Ownership: The Positive Impacts of Law-Abiding Citizens Owning Firearms”

With the violent crime rate increasing disproportionately in urban communities, it’s no surprise that a recent phone survey of black voters found that 80 percent felt gun violence was an “extremely serious” problem. However, it seems this surge in violence actually has many in the black community changing their views on gun ownership.

In 1993, 74 percent of African-Americans favored gun control. Fast forward to 2018, and a Crime Prevention Research Center report found that concealed carry permits are on the rise – especially among minorities. In Texas alone, the number of blacks with permits has grown by almost 140 percent since 2012. Overall, this growth in the number of permits for blacks is happening 20 percent faster than for whites.

This increasingly positive attitude toward firearms might not be a new paradigm, but rather a return to form.

Continue reading “Negroes With Guns: The Untold History of Black NRA Gun Clubs and the Civil Rights Movement”

“I have repeatedly told CNN and our other media the following if you don’t want to propagate more mass murders: Don’t start the story with sirens blaring. Don’t have photos of the killer. Don’t make it 24/7 coverage. Do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story. Localize the story to the affected community. And make it as boring as possible in every other market.”

Hollywood has a clever way of distorting our perspective on history, and a great example of this is Western film – a movie genre we’ve all come to love. Cattle rustlers, guns blazing, outlaws running loose, and vigilantes dishing out vengeance indiscriminately. These scenes have become more synonymous with the American Frontier than Winchester and their “Cartridge That Won the West.” But these fictional tales have produced more than entertainment for over a century; they’ve also contributed to an ongoing, subtle push for gun control, all while making Hollywood millions.

Revisionist history books tell us that the “Wild West” was an anarchic period of time that was not conducive to human prosperity. Images of a Hobbesian nightmare – a life that is brutish and short – are ingrained in our consciousness thanks to decades of public schooling and violent images on the silver screen which are light on actual history and heavy on creative license.

Continue reading “The American Old West: How Hollywood Made It “Wild” to Make Money & Advance Gun Control”

The Second Amendment is one of most fundamental provisions of the Bill of Rights, and one of the most fiercely debated. Since it was first put to paper, legal scholars, gun owners and anti-gun activists have engaged in an endless discussion over the meaning and scope of the Second Amendment, and for most of that time, gun owners have been on the losing side of the argument.

Time and again, the pro- and anti-gun factions of American society have appealed to the Supreme Court, the last judge of the law, for a resolution of their differences. Except in its earliest ruling on the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court held that American citizens had no inherent right to bear arms. According to the highest court in the land, the Second Amendment only protected the states’ right to maintain a militia, not an individual’s right to possess firearms.

Continue reading “The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment: Understanding the Court’s Landmark Decisions”

The ATF isn’t all bad. In fact, they had a policy of letting illegal gun purchases go between 2006 and 2011. It ended up getting U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry killed on December 14, 2010, and let Mexican criminals get enough guns that they were found at over 150 crime scenes where Mexican citizens were either killed or maimed. And some of the guns were used in the November 2015 terrorist attack in Paris at the Bataclan. But other than that, it turned out just fine.

(In case you’re not picking up on it, we’re laying on the sarcasm very thick right now.)

You probably know what was officially called “Project Gunrunner” as “Operation Fast and Furious.” Started under George W. Bush, this ATF policy audaciously grew under President Obama and became indicative of the perceived attack on American gun owners by both policy makers and their friends in the establishment media.

Continue reading “Operation Fast and Furious: The Forgotten History of the ATF’s Notorious Gunwalking Scandal”

“I’m the gun guy, a loud guitar Dirty Harry with a ponytail.”

The list of conservative rock-and-rollers is pretty short. But even if you were only going to have just one, Ted Nugent would do the trick.

The Nuge. Uncle Ted. Great Gonzo. The Motor City Madman. He goes by many names, but he was born with the unassuming moniker Theodore Anthony Nugent in 1948, the third of four kids in Redford, MI. Part of a military family, Nugent’s father was a career sergeant in the army. For his part, though, Nugent was of draft age during the Vietnam War, he flunked his physical and was declared unfit for military service. Today, however, he is a member of the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Felony Task Force.

Nugent began his rock-and-roll career with the Amboy Dukes, one of the premiere psychedelic rock bands of the era. They replaced the equally legendary Shadows of Knight as the house band at The Cellar, a teen rock club in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, IL. Their breakout hit was “Journey to the Center of the Mind,” a song that is clearly about LSD use – but not to Uncle Ted, who is one of the most notoriously sober rockers in history. In fact, he was cited by Minor Threat’s Ian MacKaye, and others of the early hardcore scene, as one of the biggest inspirations for the straight-edge movement.

Continue reading “Ted Nugent: The Forgotten History of the Conservative Rock-and-Roller and Gun Advocate”