I’m all for Trump firing Bondi. But watching this video, made me crawl down another rabbit hole. If you bear with me, you might find where I ended up interesting.
Now what led me down this rabbit hole was when he talked about Bondi ordering member lists. Regarding members lists, there’s this from FPC,
https://www.firearmspolicy.org/fpc-statement-on-reese-v-atf-judgment
I like plain English, To be clear: FPC has never provided a list of its members to the government—and never will. Good for FPC.
And this from SAF, https://saf.org/judgment-in-18-20-handgun-purchase-ban-severely-limits-relief/
From the above, this is a little weak, And even then, they’re only covered if SAF discloses their membership to the government under duress. We’re currently examining our options in relation to the relief granted and will vigorously defend our members’ right to free association and privacy of such.
Notice it’s not a flat out, “No, we will never turn over our membership list.”?
And then notice the final two sentences from the SAF presser, SAF brings these cases on behalf of our members and through the generous support of our members. When we win, the relief we’ve secured rightly flows through to the entire membership and not just a small subset.
SAF seems to forget that Constitutional rights are for ALL American citizens, and are not dependent on ones membership to SAF or any other group. SAF further appears to forget that the Constitution does not restrain we the people, but instead, the government.
But then, on X there’s this, same date as the above presser statement from their website,
Now that’s a nice statement, the kind in which the other presser should’ve had.
What struck me from the NAGR video, was that I’d read this yesterday,
I’m still learning how to twit twat, but it looks like the NAGR post is date stamped, 7:52pm Oct 10. While Mark Smith’s post is 1:16pm Oct 10.
To add more confusion to this, if you look here, https://www.firearmspolicy.org/news as of the night of 10-11/10-12, I don’t see any mention to back up Mark Smith’s claims. However, SAF has this from Oct 10 on their website, https://saf.org/saf-files-motion-to-amend-judgment-in-reese-v-atf/
After a district court in Louisiana ruled earlier this week that the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) must turn over its member list as part of the court’s judgment in Reese v. ATF, the organization, in partnership with the Department of Justice (DOJ), filed its motion to amend the judgment today.
And from the PDF of their motion, which the dreaded government signed on to, is this,
- The Government, as a general policy, does not compel disclosure of the identity of members of private organizations, and the Government did not seek to do so here.
So in the end, Mark Smith is correct. Or is he wrong? https://www.news2a.com/national/doj-moves-to-amend-court-judgment-requesting-membership-lists-in-reese-v-atf/
“To be sure, the organizational members may have a First Amendment right to decline to disclose the identity of their members to Defendants”)
The recently-filed joint motion clarifies the DOJ position stating “The Government, as a general policy, does not compel disclosure of the identity of members of private organizations, and the Government did not seek to do so here.”
Parties requested the following amendment to the judgment to satisfy the controversy around the membership list request:
And to alter the language of paragraph 5 to replace “shall provide” with “may provide.”
There’s a big legal difference between “shall” and “may”. And it appears Mark Smith is wrong.
And to SAF’s credit, they became much more defiant about sharing member lists,
“In all my years working in and around the Second Amendment litigation space I have never seen such an egregious order issued by the court,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “To think we would even consider releasing member information is beyond the pale, and we will fight tooth and nail to protect the privacy of all SAF members. We’re grateful the DOJ agreed to join the motion, and we hope this ends the issue once and for all.”
But that of course begs questions, such as why was SAF weak kneed in the first place about sharing member lists? And did they only grow defiant, because DOJ signed their motion?
Then to make things even murkier, there’s this video, which admittedly is hard to follow, Mark Smith talks too fast, but he seems to be going out of his way to be an apologist for Bondi/Trump.
It’s a long video, but at about 18:10 he shows a passage from the court documents.
There’s a few things Mark Smith says, which don’t make sense. One for instance is why must we have “associational standing”? Why would a pro 2A ruling only apply to members of the 2A group which brought the lawsuit? I’m not discouraging people from being involved in 2A obviously, but, just trying to understand this “precedent” Smith keeps talking about. How can the 2A movement demand originalism, while emphasizing “precedent”? Shouldn’t a pro 2A ruling apply to everyone within the courts jurisdiction, regardless of organization membership? I think it should.
Then of course the big one, why is the Trump admin fighting this to begin with?
And I never heard Smith mention the DOJ wrote initially wrote “shall provide”, as shown above from the news2a.com piece.
In the end, NAGR is correct, Trump’s DOJ (Bondi) did want, (whether it’s “asked” or “demanded”, is irrelevant, they wanted the membership lists), Mark Smith kinda sorta admits it, yet has some word salad way of excusing it.
And finally, I must ask something about all the pro 2A groups and many of the “faces” like Mark Smith, why do they have to make things so complicated? Is, A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. really so complicated to understand? No. So then why must defending it be so complicated? I’m sure a “prag” will have an answer.
Then that reminds me of a line I heard on t.v. years ago, “Complexity favors the well connected.”
The end. (Of this rabbit hole.)
Equip, train, pray and never disarm.
Update, AAG Dhillon’s been on a twit twat tirade against NAGR. Her statements are bologna, and she’s gone so over board in her nonsense that she should lose all credibility with anyone who hasn’t been “MAGAmerized”.
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