A Different Kind of Gun-Grabbing

The left’s unrelenting war on the Second Amendment has been ongoing for decade after decade, lasting nearly a century in length.

In that century, a cadre of organizations have come and gone with the common goal of enacting “common sense” gun safety or “common sense” background checks.  

Such an enactment would limit the Second Amendment’s applicability to a class of firearms, accessories, and the like. These anti-gun thinktanks, advocates, and politicians coalesce around the infamous line uttered by Senator Diane Feinstein in 1995 on “60
Minutes” when she said: “If I could’ve gotten 51 votes in the Senate, and said ‘Mr. and Mrs. America,’ turn them all in I would have done it.”

Now, the left’s organizations have allegedly decided to unite with one another to dismantle the gun industry, thereby effectively disarming Americans of their right to purchase and possess a firearm.

On March 2, 2021, The New York Times dubbed the ongoing case between Smith and Wesson and the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office and the resulting series of cases as “The Most Important Gun Lawsuit You’ve Never Heard Of.”

The Times even went so far as to admit the plot of the New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal was “a Trojan horse to expose publicly, for the first time, the inner workings of the gun industry.”

In a recent dossier obtained by Newsmax from a reliable source, a hidden web appears to the reader and the concerned citizen showing that there is more than meets the eye.

In a pending lawsuit brought by Smith and Wesson against New Jersey Attorney General Grewal, Smith and Wesson allege the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office has subpoenaed gun manufacturers, namely Smith and Wesson, to hand over documents under the guise of “increasing accountability.”

Grewal and Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy decided to sign onto a national campaign
called “Do Not Sit Idly By,” which would require gun-makers to hand over documents
that the Attorney General’s Office would find “helpful in curbing the problem of gun violence.”

The same Times piece also quotes the chief legal counsel for the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, J. Adam Skaggs as saying that the subpoena filed by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office would give them “the ability to see behind the scenes and to see their internal documents and to have their executives sit down and face the music.”

The Giffords group then created a team of pro bono professional, high-power, and political litigators from across the upper echelons of the top law firms in America, coming together under the haughty name: Firearm Accountability Counsel Taskforce (FACT).

These lawyers include litigators from well-known industry names, including Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, which happens to be the firm that is working directly with the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office as an approved Special Counsel for Firearm Safety Litigation.

The dossier obtained by Newsmax contains a printed email correspondence exchanged between the Washington Attorney General’s Office, Paul Weiss, and Giffords. On March 12, 2020, Deputy Attorney General Todd Bowers met with Giffords and Paul Weiss on GoToMeeting and viewed a presentation.

One year later, on March 22, 2021, both New Jersey and Washington Attorneys General signed onto a letter spearheaded by Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Josh Shapiro. The list of Attorneys General petitioning the Department of Justice under U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland are demanding the Justice Department to direct the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives to close the loophole on ghost
gun receivers.

At a January 2021 conference held by the Center on Civil Justice at NYU School of Law entitled “Firearms Litigation: Liability, Regulation, and the Constitution,” the last Zoom panel entitled “The Future of Litigation Strategies,” included both Christopher Boehning (Paul Weiss) and Hannah Shearer (Giffords), and one could even receive his or her  continued legal education (CLE) credits from attending this panel.

These panelists and others spoke for approximately 75 minutes about challenges that they face in navigating the litigation stream and how they have tried to overcome these challenges. By “challenges,” they mean a heightened level of scrutiny that the courts give cases in conflict with constitutional amendments because they are at the apex of potential government overreach if any of these amendments are violated.

This web of anti-gun activists is precisely the kind of collusion that actually exists in the
shadows that the left prefers to keep hidden from their voters and the rest of the public.

Nevertheless, gun right opponents clearly want to recruit sympathetic footsoldiers to wage legal warfare by practicing the art of abusing legal systems and principles to win against a legal enemy — gun manufacturers. Moreover, it rewards its high-powered attorneys at the
expense of the taxpayers. 

In the end, they want nothing more than to quietly and effectively disarm the American people by suing manufacturers out of existence. It is only through piercing the semi-invisible shield that has so far protects these organizations, that a fuller understanding of the endgame becomes clear.

The question is how many proponents of the Second Amendment will respond to them.

Michael Cozzi is a Ph.D candidate at Catholic University in Washington D.C.

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