Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Gun-Control Groups Racking Up Losses Across America

Michael Bloomberg (Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2844345)

Gun-control groups have been on a losing streak in court this summer, highlighted by the Supreme Court’s decision in Wolford v. Lopez.

The most recent defeat came when a United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit shot down a suit against Texas filed by Everytown for Gun Safety trying to make it easier to prohibit concealed carry in private businesses. The legal losses over the last six weeks have been punctuated by the Supreme Court’s June 25 ruling in Wolford v. Lopez, which struck down a Hawaiian law that barred concealed carry on private property without the express permission of the owner.

A week prior to the Wolford ruling, the Supreme Court pared back the federal government’s ability to prosecute marijuana users for firearms possession in Hemani v. United States in a unanimous decision.

In the Wolford opinion, Associate Justice Samuel Alito skewered the Hawaii Supreme Court’s invocation of the “spirit of Aloha” to ignore the Second Amendment.

Giffords Law Center, the legal arm of the Giffords anti-Second Amendment group named for former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, filed amicus briefs defending the gun laws at issue in both Hemani and Wolford.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals threw out New Jersey’s ban on modern semiautomatic firearms in a July 17 ruling authored by a Biden appointee. Giffords and Everytown filed amicus briefs in that case, defending the New Jersey law’s constitutionality.

Everytown and Giffords did not immediately respond to requests for comments from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Pro-Second Amendment groups also won a legal victory in Virginia, when state judges blocked the ban on modern semiautomatic firearms that Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed into law on May 14. The case has been placed on hold pending the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Viramontes v. Cook County, which is challenging a similar ban on Second Amendment grounds.

Everytown for Gun Safety touted its $1 million ad campaign for Spanberger shortly after she defeated then-Republican Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in the 2025 gubernatorial race. However, the surge of firearms sales in Virginia prior to the ban taking effect arguably left the number of modern semiautomatics much higher than if the ban had not been in effect.

Giffords PAC endorsed Spanberger in May 2024, saying her election would remove “a roadblock” to enacting anti-Second Amendment measures. After Spanberger won the November election, the group celebrated the restoration of a “gun safety trifecta” in Virginia.