Armed with Reason: The Podcast - Episode 18
If the NRA is out, who is in?
This week, Devin Hughes and Caitlin Clarkson Pereira from GVPedia have a conversation about the demise of the NRA and the other organizations now vying for dominance in the pro-gun space; and the ramifications of the upcoming decision on the Supreme Court case, United States v. Rahimi.
Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence
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Given the abundance of gun violence in our country, it is critical to have the ability to discuss and advocate for a safer community. This podcast is one more way for the movement to do just that.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION:
Caitlin: Hello everyone. Thanks so much for joining us here on the Armed With Reason podcast, brought to you by GVPedia. Today, we are going to shift gears a little bit and talk about some current events in the pro-gun space. Last month, the jury found that Wayne LaPierre and the National Rifle Association, the NRA, are liable in a corruption trial. And yesterday, at the time of this recording, The Trace released an article talking about the pro-gun groups vying for our [attention] as the NRA declines. One of those groups is the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the NSSF, which Po Murray — who is a board member of our's and also the chair of Newtown Action Alliance — published an article on our Substack about earlier this month. So Devin and I are going to break some of this down here for you today. So to start off, Devin, can you walk us through what's been happening recently in the pro-gun space, and what these articles about the pro-gun space are about, and what it all really means.
Devin: Yeah. So good to be here again. Like, while all this has kind of come to a head in the most recent year with the culmination of the corruption trial into the NRA, it's been kind of ongoing for at least the past decade, at least with the NSSF, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which, as Po mentioned, was ironically based in Newtown, like their headquarters was there when the shooting occurred back in 2012. Just last year, they moved to another small Connecticut town. But despite kind of being a small town in Connecticut, it has grown massively. So while the NRA is still the largest pro-gun organization with revenues over $200 million dollars, the National Shooting Sports Foundation has revenues around $53 million dollars and has tried to cast itself as kind of the reasonable you can work with us alternative to the NRA and other pro-gun groups, and I'll touch on the other pro-gun groups in just a bit. But the NSSF's really pitch of being reasonable is basically a smoke screen. As Poe lays out in her article, and I encourage everybody who's listening, if you had if you didn't read that article, go back in our archive and read it.
They've been successful in lobbying changes. For example during the Trump administration they moved the regulation of overseas sales from the State Department to the Commerce Department. So rather than being an issue of national security, of whether they're sending a bunch of guns say to countries that are having domestic strife, for example, like Haiti now becomes a commerce thing, which is how much money you can make. And while this didn't really rise to national attention, it was still a substantial change in policy that will likely have ramifications going forward. It's also been successful in having its programs be partnered with by the Federal Government. So for example, on the CDC's own website they have their child safe program, which is safe storage without really mentioning like why safe storage is super important, in terms of the research that shows that safe storage is extremely important and saves lives. They don't really get into that. They have programs with the ATF to try to stop straw buyers. Which all on the surface level sounds like, hey, this is reasonable and great. But almost all their policies are really watered down, and they're still very deliberately pushing the pro-gun narrative that the best way to keep yourself safe is a gun in the home. So they're kind of the most insidious of the new pro-gun organizations, and have one of the largest budgets to take advantage of the NRA's decline.
And then there's the other pro-gun groups that are kind of jockeying for position. So one of the older ones that has kind of... well, it hasn't always existed. It's been around though for like 50 years, and it's basically for, if you think that the NRA is a bunch of liberal pansies who are too soft on guns and you want like to be true patriots, Gun Owners of America was your organization. And despite only having like a revenue of seven million, so it's like super small relative to the NRA, though still pretty large relative to other groups in the space. It's basically been the no compromise version of the NRA where basically any sort of gun law is unconstitutional, and it's basically Second Amendment without any exceptions. And yeah, so they're basically one of the most hardcore groups. And they've been rising in popularity due to the corruption at the NRA, because Gun Owners for America has gone after the NRA for being weak. And now that they're falling, the Gun Owners of America is going up.
A couple of the other ones, just to mention quickly, there's the Firearms Policy Coalition, which is kind of similar to Gun Owners for America, except that they seem to get a lot more into litigation. You have the Second Amendment Foundation, which also seems relatively similar to the Firearms Policy Coalition. They basically also filed quite a few lawsuits as well. And then you have another organization, which it's actually close to impossible to tell how large they are, which is the United States Concealed Carry Association. And given my research on the internet, like I am constantly bombarded with ads for the USCCA. They originally touted themselves as nonpartisan, and just about, hey, if you're carrying guns and making sure that you have insurance when you're carrying a gun. But in recent years, they've definitely moved to a more extreme position. And they have advocates like Colion Noir, who's kind of a social media influencer in the pro-gun space, touting their product and basically the needs of self-defense.
So it's a lot of different groups, all kind of vying for various aspects of what the NRA used to cover. And while the NRA is almost certainly not going completely away anytime soon, they have been diminished. And the other groups that are seeking to take their place in a way are even scarier than the NRA, which is unfortunate and somewhat hard to believe. Yet here we are.
Caitlin: Yes. Just for some geographical context — so Connecticut's obviously a rather small state. Assuming you don't get stuck in horrendous traffic, you can get from one part of Connecticut to the other in less than two hours at every part. So where the NSSF headquarters used to be in Newtown, they moved at the end of last year, the end of 2023 to Shelton, which I'm about a half an hour from each. They're not next to each other, but they're not far. So let's say they're 30 minutes from one another. Both more conservative towns, right? Shelton, I don't know, might call themselves a city, I guess. But conservative for Connecticut standards, so whatever that is. But I do remember seeing media coverage when they did relocate to Shelton, because there were Newtown students who are a part of the Newtown Action Alliance, who wanted to be sure that residents in Shelton knew that this was happening. There are quite a few corporate entities that are housed in Shelton, and I think it's easy to hide in big office parks or office buildings. But the students did a I guess we call it a, quote unquote, a "die in," right? Where you, like, lie on the sidewalk or in front of a building to try to send a specific message. So just highlighting that here, because again it's the youth movement that we attribute to so much of the progress that we make in the gun violence prevention space.
And the NSSF relocating, albeit, you know, 20 or 30 miles from where it was before, is no different than that. So I just wanted to commend them for that effort because it certainly makes a difference, and people should know when, you know, if the NRA were in my backyard, I'm sure I would hear about that. I don't know if I would have heard about it as, in such a popular fashion if those Newtown students hadn't participated when the NSSF relocated. But anyway, that's my anecdote about them.
Devin: Yeah. And it is kind of interesting just how kind of small a visible footprint they have relative to the NRA, because like the NRA headquarters are big, like there's like weekly or monthly protests outside them, like it's hard to miss. Whereas with the NSSF it's like, when I visited Newtown, gosh, seven years or so ago, like I was just driving down the road and then, oh, there's their headquarters. And it was just kind of random, almost. Particularly given how large and successful that they have been. It's just kind of incongruous, like their physical size versus their actual impact.
Caitlin: Right. And again, a good reminder for people around to let them know, like, hey, this is this is here and this is what they're responsible for. So moving from pro-gun groups to the Supreme Court — which albeit fall under different names but recently don't seem to be making very different decisions — there is a case pending in front of the court called United States v. Rahimi. Can you tell us about this case and Caroline Light's recent articles, which ran on our Substack, about it?
Devin: Yeah. So, Caroline Light had a couple excellent articles, one of which went into basically a timeline of what's happened in this case, and then the other being the ramifications of it. And basically, Rahimi is a, frankly an asshole, and an abusive one at that. So back in 2019, he became physically violent with his girlfriend. This was in Texas. When she tried to flee the scene, he shoved her, dragged her into his car, threatened to shoot his girlfriend, and then fired his gun at a bystander who had witnessed all this. So a court in 2020 revoked his license and then also put in a domestic violence protective order because of all the major domestic violence. Rahimi sued and basically argued that the domestic violence restraining order is unconstitutional. And that he should basically have his guns back based on that.
Why does he say it's unconstitutional? Well, because in 2022, we had the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen case, which is often just shortened to Bruen, where the Supreme Court established a new test which basically said if something's covered by the Second Amendment there needs to be historical regulation about it, or a very close analogy without defining what, how close or what the analogy would look like. And this poses a problem for domestic violence restraining orders, because back when the Second Amendment was written, domestic violence was not a thing. Or in fact, it's almost the opposite, where domestic violence was a fact of life like that, and beating your wife was acceptable behavior.
Caitlin: Right. Yes. I'm going to interrupt. I'm going to interrupt because I know you meant it's not a thing like it didn't happen. But it's not a thing, like it just was, right? Well, it's, we didn't talk about it. Yeah, like the rule of thumb — do you know what the term the rule of thumb comes from? This is like a completely random tantrum. So, you could, like, beat your wife with a stick. Also, I'm going to put a trigger warning at the beginning of this episode. You can beat your wife with a stick as long as it wasn't wider than your thumb. So that was it. Anyway, so Just for anybody, for anyone listening, we certainly recognize that not only was it a thing, it was just an accepted part of life, which is a whole nother dissertation in itself. But sorry to interrupt. Go on.
Devin: Yeah. And basically what I meant by "not a thing" is like, nobody considered it violent or anything out of the norm, which is horrific and shows how much of our society has evolved since then. However, with the Supreme Court, it's basically like, well, if something wasn't codified back then, clearly it wouldn't have been seen as constitutional back then, so we can't have it now.
Which is like to put in my own analogy, that the Supreme Court would probably reject, it's like being in the medical field and saying like, oh, well, because in the 1790s they didn't have X-ray machines, and thought leeching was a good idea, therefore, most of modern medicine is unconstitutional. Like, there's no other aspect of our society where we would run based off what frankly slave-holding, genocidal, wife-beating assholes, who did have some great ideas, like the First Amendment is pretty solid. You have other aspects of the Constitution that are very good ideas. And then you have some terrible ideas like slavery, or being able to beat your way, or stuff like that. And we should be able to move on in society and recognize that some of those ideas are bad.
But the Supreme Court has moved in the opposite direction lately on that. So now we have a person who was under a domestic violence restraining order, has all sorts of other charges against him, basically arguing that the domestic violence restraining order is unconstitutional. Yeah. Which, like, it's bizarre that that's even an option that's heading to the Supreme Court. But here we are.
Caitlin: Also, if you asked some people who decided they should do their own research on what's appropriate in the medical field about leeching, some of them might agree with you. So I don't know if we can entirely extrapolate that these days. But but that's neither here nor there. All right. So, let's talk about what you just discussed regarding restraining orders and domestic violence. What does the research say about the importance of restraining orders preventing someone from getting a firearm? And how is that research taken into account by the courts?
Devin: Yeah. So the research on domestic violence restraining orders is overwhelming, that when they're including a gun ban save lives — and this should be obvious. Like, if somebody is engaged in domestic violence, then having a gun is one of the worst things possible for the situation. It's also important that these restraining orders be enforced because so often in cases, we'll see where the court just says, Oh, you can't have guns, and then do nothing about it, like checking to see if those guns are no longer there. And it's also one of the reasons why not having some form of registry is terrible because like, well, they might be able to get some of the guns from the person from that state, it's not necessarily certain that they're going to pick up guns from a different state; or the person goes out and gets new guns through private sales.
So there're all sorts of loopholes that were deliberately put there by pro-gun organizations that make it harder to enforce domestic violence restraining orders. But even with all of that, they're still extremely effective, according to the research. So it's just a testament to how powerful they are that even when they aren't fully enforced and with all the loopholes, they're still having a sizable effect. Now, in the face of all that evidence, what the Supreme Court does is take, crumple it up, and throw it into a waste bin and say it's irrelevant, because that's really what Bruen did. It basically said, no matter how much evidence you have for a policy saving lives, if the founders didn't do it, or it's not a close analogy to what the founders did, it doesn't matter, it's going to be unconstitutional. Which is a substantial change over the 2008 D.C. v. Heller, where you had a two-part test, whereas like, did the founders do it? Was there some historical regulation? And then if not, does the state have a substantial reason for doing this, such as saving lives? And even though D.C. v. Heller was a bad decision based on history and just logic in general, it still didn't change all that much because courts looked at the available evidence as like, yeah, the state has a substantial interest in saving lives, so we're keeping these policies in place. And then Bruen was like, no, you have to ditch the evidence.
And so now we have basically the ridiculous case of the United States v. Rahimi coming forward where people with domestic violence restraining orders might be able to keep their guns. And the appellate court, I believe, is the one who basically overturned the law based off of Bruen. And now it's up to the extremely conservative Supreme Court in terms of just how far they want to go in terms of stripping gun laws. So, hopefully they see reason, but there hasn't been much hope on that front for a while now.
Caitlin: Right. So as far as recent trends, aside from anything related to what we were just talking about with domestic violence and restraining orders, is there anything in particular you are concerned about when it comes to the interpretations of the Second Amendment?
Devin: Yeah. So, I mean outside just the like frankly a historical history-only test, which is not how the courts treat anything else like. And also, it's worth noting that the overwhelming majority of historians, like, people who are professionally studying history, disagree with the Supreme Court's history-only opinion, which should tell you something about how bad it is. It's like, yeah, we should trust the history. These people study history and say you're wrong. Oh, ignore those people. Like it shows where we're at.
But there's a growing movement that's in a way, I wouldn't say even more insiduous, but it's getting there. So when the Second Amendment was written way back when a well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Historically, despite what the Supreme Court says, it was meant to be referring to militias. Like the Founding Fathers feared a standing army and basically having a king-like figure emerge, take that standing army, and crush all the states. The states wanted to have their own forces for domestic security and external security, and they don't want the federal government to be able to come in and say, hey, you need to disband this militia or a South Carolina militia. There's something going on in Maine. You need to march up there and leave South Carolina defenseless. Defenseless against what, in South Carolina's case? Well, the native tribes who were being persecuted and eliminated, and also all the slaves that were there in South Carolina. So that was the Second Amendment's original purpose, which was definitely fear of tyranny. But it was at the state level, and the militia was state control like, well, people had to secure their own muskets and such because the state couldn't afford to give everybody a musket. You'd still show up..., you'd have training by the state, and then you would be ordered around by the state. It was a collective organization, and it was well-regulated.
Fast forward a couple hundred years, and in the D.C. v. Heller case, they decide that, the Supreme Court, that the Second Amendment is about an individual right to self-defense. Now, the overwhelming majority of historians disagree with that. Looking at the text itself pretty firmly indicates that that's false. And but it's what the Supreme Court decided, and so that's what stand in our legal system. So you have this individual right about self defense; and you have this collective right that was originally intended, which was kind of about securing against tyranny. Those two should not mesh ever. Because when they mesh, you get this growing movement for an individual right to insurrection, which is incredibly dangerous.
And I'm not saying that's incredibly dangerous just as an idea, but we've seen it in practice with a number of mass shooters. You had the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which was a direct action against the government because he felt that the government was becoming tyrannical, and that it was his constitutional duty to stand up to the government. And so you have this insurrection theory, which basically merges an individual right with a right to stop tyranny where it throws what people, what any person, no matter how extreme their views are, what they see as tyranny as basically justification. And it should be extremely clear how dangerous that is, particularly in a political environment where there's allegations of elections being rigged and "tyranny" is thrown about just casually. It's a dangerous mix. And you have a bunch of people with extreme political beliefs who are heavily armed and will see themselves as defending constitutional order. And under this theory, which was basically started around the 1970s or so — and has unfortunately seen growing momentum — there's dangerous and deadly consequences. And so, even as bad as the United States v. Rahimi has the potential to be, how bad the Bruen decision was, and Heller decision, this is the element of the Second Amendment thought — and I use the term "thought" very loosely here — that scares me the most. Because, like the United States in recent decades, we had January 6th, but we've had very few political assassinations relative to other countries. We've had surprisingly few like armed attempts against lawmakers, with January 6th being the notable, staggering exception. The United States had been relatively politically peaceful for a while, which for a land with 400 million guns is kind of interesting. Like even in Japan, you had multiple assassinations of political officials, and they have the strongest gun laws in the world. And it shows with only like a dozen or under gun deaths or gun homicides each year. But they still had political violence. And if this view of the Second Amendment, which has been enshrined in law review articles — and law review articles get cited in court cases, like they don't just go into a black hole that nobody else reads — it could lead to very dangerous consequences.
Caitlin: Yeah. And I think something that I try to keep — I mean, there's a lot of parts of the Second Amendment and the history of it that I always have running through my mind — but something I try to keep in the forefront is that it is ironic that we say, all right, well, we want to make decisions based on the history, but this was written when you had a musket, and you had to pack it in order to fire it, and it would take 60 to 90 seconds to get one shot off. And obviously technology has come leaps and bounds in a myriad of ways, not just in firearms, but that in itself changes everything, right? If machine guns were around, when, you know, George Washington is sitting at his desk thinking like, Oh, I wonder how this should look? I can't imagine it would have been written in the same sort of way. So to me, we remember the parts that support what we wanted to, and then we conveniently forget the other components.
Devin: Yeah. So a couple thoughts on that. And one, it's like, there's a way to do it in a militia sense, and it's what Switzerland does, where it's like, yeah, almost every able bodied person is a part of the militia, and you are able to take your assault rifle home, but the ammunition is stored and sealed. And if you break the seal of that ammunition for any reason, including self-defense, you are in major legal trouble. And oftentimes all those arms and stuff are stored in armories. Or you can collectively keep arms. So like we do have a modern version of what that looks like in Switzerland, and they have substantially more strict restrictions on personal ownership and carrying of firearms than we do in the U.S. So like, it is possible to like kind of modernize and update like what the Second Amendment would look like. It's not remotely what we have currently.
And to go back to the, like historical point, I'm a slight history nerd. So it takes around 20 to 30 seconds to fire a shot if you're trained. Like if it was me, it'd probably take 60 to 90 seconds. But there's this argument that's like, oh, well, the arms for warfare and the arms for self-defense back then were the same thing. Which, if you know anything about the firearms back then, is completely absurd. Like a flintlock pistol and like flintlock rifle are absolutely terrible ideas for personal self-defense because it takes so long to load. And also, like you have to, even carrying a flintlock pistol, back then you'd have to carry it in a special box so it doesn't get wet. You can't tip the gun downwards because the bullet would literally roll out of the gun. And so, and also take the 20 seconds. There's this drill today called the Tueller Drill, which is meant for police. But basically you need to fire, be able to draw and fire your handgun twice in two seconds at a target 20 feet away. Why that distance in that time frame? Well, it takes your average man or woman, to cross 20 feet, it takes about two seconds. And so basically, if you're not able to get your gun up and firing in those two seconds, you just introduced a handgun or lethal weapon into a wrestling match, because you're not going to be able to get the shots off.
Now, how many altercations or arguments start where the person is 20 feet or further away and you recognize that? The answer is basically none of them. Now we'll apply that to a weapon that it takes 20 to 30 seconds to load. It takes a person to cross about ten feet per second. So you're having an argument 200 feet away from somebody you recognize are going to be a threat. Hold on a minute while I load my gun for 2o seconds, and they're going to be able to cross that 200 feet to get to you. Like there's a reason why what was called the Bowie Knife or Arkansas Toothpick was the weapon of choice that was being banned back then because it was a far more effective tool of self-defense. And also for killing, which was why many states tried to ban it. So the idea that it's like, oh, the tools of or the arms for warfare, like flintlock pistols and flintlock muskets, are the same as like what's good for self-defense just belies a whole lot of historical beliefs. And is one of the many reasons why historians look at the recent court findings and stuff and just shake their head because it has no basis in reality.
Caitlin: And all of that math as far as it takes you x number of seconds to to draw your gun, to shoot at whatever the case is, is not including adrenaline and your heart rate, both of which create scenarios where it's harder for your body to complete a task in that specific amount of time...
Devin: And it assumes good training, proper lighting....
Caitlin: All of these things. I mean, if your heart rate's 160 beats per second, which it very well could be when you feel like your life is at risk or your partner's life is at risk as an officer, at the training that it takes to be able to have not only a steady hand but for your mind to communicate properly to your extremities, to do what you need to do, it's very complicated right there. The physiological impacts that has is is really critical to understanding.
Devin: Yeah. Because like our caveman brain decided that way back when it was a fantastic idea when our adrenaline starts rushing for all the blood to flow away from our extremities. That's right. And for us to lose, like, the ability to do complex tasks with our hand, and pulling the trigger under stress is a relatively complex task. And so our entire biology, in a way, like directly makes it harder to do that in these situations. And so it takes an incredible amount of training that like more than half of states, there's no training or anything now. And even in the states with training, it's relatively limited training, that just don't capture the actual realities of how hard it is to use a gun successfully in self-defense.
Caitlin: Right? Yeah, in a vacuum maybe it looks great, right, on paper, but in real life, it's a completely different scenario. So any other final thoughts that you would like to throw in here before I wrap our episode up?
Devin: Not particularly. I think it went relatively well for preparing it like ten minutes in advance.... Caitlin emails me last night, it's like, Yeah, so what are we going to talk about? Like, I don't know. And then this morning it's like, So what were you going to talk about? Yeah, I should probably get on that. So we're a super professional podcast.
Caitlin: Further proof that there is no shortage of topics to cover when it comes to gun violence, or gun violence prevention. And unfortunately, because this is our profession here, we know a lot about it and can throw together podcasts. So I don't know if that's something we should be proud of, or again, just something that should make us more depressed.
But I just want to throw in here that next month, April, is officially our first anniversary for our Armed With Reason Substack, which is just shocking. That year went by very quickly. So if you're not subscribed, just a reminder to please do so. We are actually getting close to 1000 subscribers, which would be a really fantastic milestone for our first anniversary. So if you are subscribed, maybe you can encourage folks that are in the gun violence prevention space, or family members who might be interested in learning a bit more about it. Again, we put out content five days a week, some about myth busting, some are unique articles that are written just for our page, either by some of us here or outside contributors. We also do Friday Finds, where we share various articles and media hits regarding gun violence and gun violence prevention. And then the podcast, of course, is also something that goes out on our Substack. So we would really love to hit that thousand subscriber milestone if we can, in the next 30 or so days.
This is actually episode 18 of our Armed With Reason podcast, and we'll probably have at least one more, maybe two more before we wrap up the first season, which also is another impressive milestone for us. So, we've talked a little bit about this before, but the podcast is something that we were sort of throwing back and forth as an idea of something potentially interesting that we could do to share more about gun violence and myth busting. And we decided one day to finally go for it, and here we are. So, proud of us for sticking with it, even when it's only the night before that we prep. I think the product is still important and gives people a way to learn more about gun violence when they're driving to work, or doing the dishes, or whatever it might be when you find a couple minutes to listen to us -- which of course, we appreciate. So I'm going to say farewell to you, Devin. I'm sure I'll talk to you sooner than later. And thank you to everybody for listening.
Devin: Thank you so much, and see you soon.