Though women were a small minority of hunters in the mid-20th century, photographs like this one are a reminder that the hunting tradition was never exclusively male.

I`m looking forward to deer season starting later this fall. How about you?
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#deerseason #vintagehuntingphotos #deerhunters #huntingtraditions #1950swomen ...

When the Constitutional Convention proposed a Constitution without a bill of rights, Benjamin Franklin "was under no illusions. On the last day of the convention, he stated that `this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it....` In a few minutes, the Constitution was signed by all of the delegates present, except for three who believed the convention had exceeded its authority---George Mason, Elbridge Gerry, and Edmund Randolph of Virginia. As the last members were signing, Franklin looked at the painting of a rising sun behind the president`s chair and observed to those sitting around him: `I have often and often, in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the president, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now, at length, I have the happiness to know that it is a rising, not a setting sun.`

"George Mason was not so sure and was already drafting objections to the Constitution...."

Today marks the 239th anniversary of delegates signing the U.S. Constitution at the close of the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. (It would take until June of the following year for all 13 states to ratify it.)

From Halbrook, The Founders` Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms, p. 176.
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#philadelphiaconvention #constitutionalconvention #1787 #thefounderssecondamendment #onthisdateinhistory ...

Shays’ Rebellion was an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers in 1786, led by Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays. The farmers protested heavy taxes and debt-collection practices that threatened their farms and livelihoods.

"Shays` Rebellion in 1786 led to enactment of a law that if 12 or more persons `armed with clubs, or other weapons` gathered, a justice of the peace could order them to disperse and could `require the aid of a sufficient number of persons in arms` to help. Obviously, 11 or fewer persons could go armed together. Other than that, Massachusetts had no laws restricting the peaceable bearing of arms."

From Halbrook, The Right to Bear Arms: A Constitutional Right of the People or a Privilege of the Ruling Class?, p. 153 (hardback edition).

Image: Portrait of Daniel Shays. Also, “Shays’s forces in Massachusetts” by William Sheppard
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#therighttobeararmshalbrook #2ahistory #shaysrebellion #DanielShays #armedcitizens ...

[ENGLISH BELOW] “Em 15 de setembro de 1935, Dia Nacional do Partido Nazista, o Reichstag, em coro unânime, adotou as Leis de Nuremberg. Elas incluíam a Lei de Cidadania do Reich, assinada por Hitler e pelo Ministro do Interior Frick, que estabelecia que ‘um cidadão do Reich é somente aquele de sangue alemão ou familiar, e que, através de sua conduta, mostre que é desejável e adequado a servir fielmente ao povo alemão e ao Reich’. O termo inglês ‘cidadão’ falha em refletir dois diferentes termos alemães que são ambos traduzidos assim. Conquanto judeus mantivessem a nacionalidade alemã (Staatsangehörigkeit), já não eram cidadãos com direitos civis (Reichsbürger), um conceito sem significado legal anterior.”
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Fora da Alemanha, as pessoas estavam horrorizadas e enfurecidas. Victor Klemperer ouviu, de alguns amigos que voltavam de Londres, que a senhora cristã que os hospedara perguntou-lhes: ‘E não há ninguém para matar esse grande porco?’”

De Halbrook, Hitler e o Desarmamento, págs. 141-142.
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Ninety-one years ago today: "On September 15, 1935, the Nazi Party`s National Day, the Reichstag unanimously adopted the Nürnberg Laws. They included the Reich Citizenship Law, which Hitler and Interior Minister Frick signed and which provided that `[a] citizen of the Reich is only that subject who is of German or kindred blood, and who, through his conduct, shows that he is both desirous and fit to serve faithfully the German people and Reich.` The English term `citizen` fails to reflect two differing German terms that are both translated as such. While Jews retained German nationality (Staatsangehörigkeit), they were no longer citizens with civil rights (Reichsbürger), a concept that had no prior legal meaning."
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"Not every `Aryan` was taken in by the anti-Jewish hysteria. Victor Klemperer recorded a Christian landlady saying about Hitler: `And there is nobody who kills this big swine?` "

From Halbrook, Gun Control in the Third Reich, p. 106.

Photo: "Adolf Hitler and Nazi SS Chief Heinrich Himmler review the SS at a Reichsparteitag ceremony, Nuremberg, Germany, September 1935."
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#NürnbergLaws #guncontrolinthethirdreich #HitlereoDesarmamento ...

“All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation.” — Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part the Second, Chapter IV, "Of Constitutions" (1792)

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) was an English-born political writer and revolutionary whose influential works, including Common Sense and Rights of Man, championed individual liberty, popular government, and the natural rights of the people.

Painting: Thomas Paine by Laurent Dabos, 1791.
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#thomaspaine #thomaspainequotes #rightsofman #usurpation #lifeandliberty ...

"The Supreme Court in Bondi v. VanDerStok (2025) rejected a challenge under the Administrative Procedure Act to a 2022 Final Rule by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF) expanding the definitions of "firearm" and "frame or receiver." ... However, the Court did not entertain the constitutional challenges brought by Defense Distributed. In a decision issued on August 17 in Defense Distributed v. Blanche, Judge Reed O`Connor of the Northern District of Texas declared the regulations unconstitutionally vague and violative of the Second Amendment."
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"Accordingly, the court declared that 27 C.F.R. § 478.11 and 27 C.F.R. § 478.12(c) are unconstitutional under the Second Amendment and the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment. The court further enjoined enforcement thereof against Defense Distributed, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), or any of SAF`s current or future members, but only with respect to the products raised in the complaint -- M1911 80% Frames and the G80 Build Kit, Unfinished Receiver, and Grip Module. The practical effect is that the company may sell the items and SAF members may buy them without requiring them to be distributed as a firearm through a federal firearms licensee.

"Defense Distributed could have a broader impact, particularly if affirmed and further exposited by the Fifth Circuit, by challenging courts to strictly construe terms like `readily,` whether found in a regulation or the statutes. The vagueness of `readily` may be ameliorated somewhat by the requirement that the government must prove that a party `knew the weapon he possessed had the characteristics that brought it within the statutory definition….` Staples v. U.S. (1994).

The above excerpts are from my Second Amendment Roundup blog post, "ATF`s `Firearm` and `Frame or Receiver` Rules Invalid" (9/9/26).

Read the post at reason.com/volokh or copy and paste: https://reason.com/volokh/2026/09/09/second-amendment-roundup-atfs-firearm-and-frame-or-receiver-rules-invalid/

Link can also be accessed through the home page of my website.
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# DefenseDistributedvBlanche #SCOTUS #firearmframeorreceiver #2ndamendmentcases #secondamendmentroundup ...

I have filed an amicus brief in Viramontes v. Cook County, Illinois, and Grant v. Higgins on behalf of the Second Amendment Law Center. In the brief, I traced the history of the AR-15 and semiautomatic rifles and argued that commonly owned rifles are protected “arms” under the Second Amendment and that modern “assault weapon” bans have no basis in our nation’s historical tradition.

The link to the amicus brief is on the homepage of my website, stephenhalbrook.com. Scroll down the left side to "On Brief" and click "Viramontes v. Cook County."
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@secondamendmentlawcenter
#Viramontes #firearmhistory #SCOTUS #gunban #2ndamendmentcase ...

"On August 28, petitioners in Viramontes v. Cook County, Illinois, and Grant v. Higgins filed their opening brief challenging the "assault firearm" bans of Cook County and the state of Connecticut that were upheld by the Seventh and Second Circuits respectively. The cases are consolidated, and the petitioners in each are represented by Cooper & Kirk. The question presented is: `Whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.` As the brief explains, the rifle is a paradigmatic American arm and the AR-15 is the paradigmatic American rifle. Textually, such semiautomatic rifles are `arms,` they are in common use and are thus protected under the Court`s precedents, and nothing in the Nation`s historical traditions justifies banning them.

"By the following week`s deadline, some forty-five amicus briefs had been filed, all in support of petitioners except for two claiming not to support either party.... Overall, the briefs address the entirety of the ever-expanding arguments that have been advanced since the first ban was passed in 1989 (unsurprisingly, California`s), as the lower courts struggle to ignore the holdings of one Supreme Court decision after another, from Heller and Bruen to Rahimi and Wolford. I`ll mention just an illustrative handful of the many fine briefs here."
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"...Look for a ton of briefs to be filed next in support of respondents. Oral argument is set for December 2."

The above excerpts are from my Second Amendment Roundup blog post, "1st Volley of Briefs Filed in Viramontes" (9/7/26).

Read the post at reason.com/volokh or copy and paste: https://reason.com/volokh/2026/09/07/second-amendment-roundup-1st-volley-of-briefs-filed-in-viramontes/

Link can also be accessed through the home page of my website, stephenhalbrook.com
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#Viramontes #grantvhiggins #SCOTUS #riflebans #AR15rifles #2ndamendmentcases #secondamendmentroundup ...