Key Takeaways

• A man in Litchfield Park was detained after he shot his wife who allegedly attacked him with a knife.
• Deputies responded to a shooting report around 1 a.m. on September 27, where the husband claimed self-defense.
• The wife sustained non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to a hospital; the investigation is ongoing.
• MCSO has not released names or elaborated on the events leading to the shooting, and no charges have been announced yet.
• Investigators will assess the situation beyond the husband’s account to determine the nature of the encounter.

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

LITCHFIELD PARK, AZ — A man was detained early Sunday after telling deputies he shot his wife when she tried to attack him with a knife, according to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

Around 1 a.m. on September 27, deputies were sent to the area of Camelback and El Mirage roads for reports of a shooting, as reported by 12News. The complainant told them his wife tried to attack him with a knife. He shot her.

Deputies arrived and detained the man. The woman was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. MCSO says the investigation is ongoing.

Everything defensive about this account comes from the husband himself. MCSO has not released either person’s name, has not described what led up to the knife, and has not said whether the man was arrested or held only for questioning. No charging decision has been announced.

More from USA Carry:

• Two Armed Homeowners Return Fire and Detain Home Intruder
• Careful Considerations on Citizen’s Arrest
• Armed Bystander Helps Disarm Knife-Wielding Suspect at Las Vegas Mall
• Fresno Resident Heroically Detains Armed Suspects w/ Shotgun Until Police Arrive
• Would-Be Intruder Shot by Apartment Resident

A knife at arm’s length inside a home is an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, and if the account holds, that is what deputies are describing. But a domestic shooting is never evaluated on the last few seconds alone. Investigators will want to know who escalated, whether he could have put a door between them, and what the physical evidence says about where each of them stood. This is the kind of case where the shooter’s own words are the only version on the record, and that cuts both ways.

As of Sunday night, the man remained detained and his wife remained in the hospital.

Read the original story: Arizona Husband Shoots Wife at 1 A.M. After He Says She Came at Him With a Knife

Key Takeaways

• An armed security officer shot and killed a man breaking a jewelry kiosk’s glass at La Gran Plaza in Fort Worth, TX.
• The incident occurred shortly after 8:30 p.m. as the man attempted to steal from the kiosk.
• Despite receiving CPR, the man died at the scene; police have not released further details about him or the officer.
• Authorities emphasize that deadly force is justified only against an imminent threat, not for theft alone.
• The officer’s decision to shoot depended on whether the man posed an immediate threat with the object he held.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

FORT WORTH, TX — An armed security officer shot and killed a man who was breaking the glass on a jewelry kiosk inside La Gran Plaza, according to the Fort Worth Police Department.

Officers were called shortly after 8:30 p.m. to the 4200 block of South Freeway near Seminary Drive, where the shopping center sits, as reported by CBS Texas. Police spokesperson Buddy Calzada said the man was seen using an object to break the glass at a jewelry kiosk inside the center. An armed security officer nearby opened fire, striking him at least once.

The wounded man ran. He made it across the parking lot and collapsed. Responding officers found him and started lifesaving measures, including CPR, Calzada said. Fort Worth Fire Department medics arrived and pronounced him dead at the scene.

Police say he was using an object to break the glass. That is everything released about it. Whether he turned it on the officer, raised it, or just kept hitting the case until the shot came, nothing public says, and I am not going to fill that gap for anyone. Deadly force is justified only against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm. The jewelry behind that glass is never that threat. The object in his hand could be, depending on what he did with it when the officer got close, and that is the detail this case turns on.

The simpler point stands on its own. A man who walks into a crowded shopping center during business hours and starts smashing a jewelry case with something hard has put himself in front of whoever is there to stop him, and he did it holding the thing he was smashing with. Nobody who stays out of that situation gets shot by a security officer at a mall. That is not a verdict on the shooting. It is just the plain fact of how he ended up in the parking lot.

More from USA Carry:

For anyone who carries, the read is the same as it was for that officer. You are not reading the crime. You are reading the man and what is in his hand. A thief with empty hands is a thief. A man swinging something hard enough to shatter a display case can swing it at a person, and whether he does is the whole decision. Training is what lets you make that read in the second you actually have, and the mindset that goes with it is that you only shoot the threat, never the theft.

Police have not identified the man, have released no further detail about the officer or the object, and no charging decision has been announced.

Read the original story: Armed Security Officer Shoots and Kills Suspected Smash-and-Grab Thief at Fort Worth’s La Gran Plaza, Police Say

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

DEKALB COUNTY, GA — A tenant at a DeKalb County apartment complex shot a man armed with a machete late Wednesday night after the man went door to door through the building, kicking at apartments and threatening to kill the people inside, residents say.

The complex sits off Snapfinger Woods Drive, as reported by WSB-TV. The wounded man was taken to a hospital with what investigators described as non-life-threatening injuries. Authorities have not released his name, and no one else was hurt.

One of the doors he worked on belonged to a 74-year-old woman identified only as Ms. Brown. She told WSB-TV she was jarred awake around 11:30 p.m. by someone kicking her door.

“I heard bam, bam, bam,” she said. “A mad man had a machete.”

Brown said the man appeared angry about a cross and another religious item she had displayed outside her apartment. He cursed at her. He yelled threats. He moved down the hall and kicked at other doors, then came back to hers and started again.

“The door started coming out. I had to take my sofa and push it against the door because it was coming out of the frame,” she said. “I was terrified beyond words.”

A 74-year-old woman braced a sofa against a failing door with a man and a machete on the other side of it. She had no way out of that apartment and no way to make him stop. That is the position every other resident in that hallway was in too, and it is why the man’s next stop mattered so much.

Residents say he kept moving through the building, kicking at several doors and trying to force his way in. He got into one. Another tenant shot him when he broke into that tenant’s apartment, according to the residents who spoke with WSB-TV. A short time later, Brown heard the gunfire.

“I don’t know who shot him. I’m glad someone did shoot him,” she said. “Because he was wielding around that machete, and he was planning to kill people.”

A machete is a contact weapon. By the time an apartment door gives way, the distance between the man holding it and the person inside is a few steps, and the rest of the building had already heard what he intended to do with it. The account residents gave also has the tenant firing when the man came through his own door, not going out into the hallway to find him. The threat came to him, and he stopped it there.

More from USA Carry:

• Georgia Man Forced to Shoot Neighbor in Self-Defense During Confrontation, Sending Him to the Hospital
• Machete-Wielding Man Stopped By Concealed Carrier
• Michigan Homeowner Fatally Shoots Intruder Who Broke Into Attached Apartment and Assaulted Tenant Before Trying to Enter Home
• Daytime Home Invasion Ends with One Suspect Dead, Three Wounded
• Home Security Footage Captures Attempted Break-In by Machete-Wielding Man

Everything reported so far comes from residents. Investigators have not publicly described the sequence of events, the wounded man’s identity has not been released, and no charging decision has been reported. The incident remains under investigation.

Brown described the man as completely out of control. “Completely insane. Couldn’t be in his right mind,” she said. The dents he left in the doors are still there.

Read the original story: DeKalb County Tenant Shoots Machete-Wielding Man Who Kicked at Apartment Doors Threatening to Kill Residents at 11:30 P.M., Then Broke Into His Unit

Key Takeaways

• Firearms Policy Coalition opposes New York AG Letitia James’s motion to dismiss in Goldberger v. James, challenging the Times Square carry ban.
• New York law makes it a felony to possess a firearm in Times Square, impacting even licensed carriers.
• James argues that she cannot be sued and that plaintiffs lack standing; FPC counters that she is an enforcer of the ban.
• FPC claims it has the right to sue on behalf of its members despite Second Circuit restrictions on organizational plaintiffs.
• FPC aims to dismantle New York’s location-based carry restrictions and will continue the legal fight against the unconstitutional ban.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

NEW YORK, NY — Firearms Policy Coalition announced on October 13, 2026, that it has filed an opposition to New York Attorney General Letitia James’s motion to dismiss in Goldberger v. James, the group’s lawsuit challenging the state’s ban on carrying a firearm in the Times Square area. A motion to dismiss asks the court to throw a case out before it ever reaches the question that matters, which here is whether the ban is constitutional.

Briefing on James’s motion began over the summer, but the court instructed the parties to hold the documents, and they did not land on the docket until the Friday before the announcement.

The law at issue is one piece of the patchwork New York built after the Supreme Court struck down the state’s may-issue carry regime in Bruen. It makes it a felony to possess a firearm in “the area commonly known as Times Square,” and it applies even to someone licensed to carry in New York City. A violation carries one to four years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000. FPC describes the zone as a sprawling stretch of ordinary streets, sidewalks, parks, hotels, residences, and businesses. That is not a courthouse or a school. It is a neighborhood, and the state has told a vetted, licensed New Yorker that walking through it armed is a felony.

James’s motion argues two things: that she cannot properly be sued over the Times Square ban, and that the plaintiffs lack standing to sue her. Standing, in plain terms, means the plaintiffs have to show that James is someone who can actually bring this law down on them, so that a court order against her would do them some good. If she is not an enforcer, she walks out of the case.

FPC’s answer is that she is an enforcer. The opposition argues that New York law expressly allows the Attorney General, at the Governor’s direction, to step into the role of a district attorney and prosecute violations of the ban. If the plaintiffs win and the court enjoins local prosecutors, meaning it orders them to stop enforcing the ban, James could remain available to enforce it in their place. As the brief puts it: “If Plaintiffs are right that the Times Square Ban is unconstitutional, that avenue needs to be closed.” A win that leaves a back door open is not much of a win.

James also wants FPC itself out of the case, leaving only the individual plaintiffs. FPC’s brief argues that the organization meets the Supreme Court’s requirements for suing on behalf of its members, and that more recent Supreme Court precedent has undermined the Second Circuit’s rule restricting organizational plaintiffs in Section 1983 cases. Section 1983 is the federal statute that lets people sue state officials for violating their constitutional rights, and the Second Circuit, which covers New York, has been an outlier in limiting whether a membership group can bring that kind of suit for its members. FPC separately argues that it may seek equitable relief against unconstitutional government action regardless of that rule. Equitable relief is a court order stopping the enforcement, as opposed to money damages, and FPC’s point is that the right to ask for that order does not depend on the Second Circuit’s rule.

“New York’s Bruen temper tantrum has already lost in court, and Letitia James does not get to hide behind procedural games while the State threatens peaceable people with years in prison for exercising their rights. FPC and our members are directly harmed by this unconstitutional ban, and we intend to make New York answer for it on the merits,” said FPC President Brandon Combs.

The “already lost in court” line has a history. In October 2022, according to Gun Owners of America’s account of a ruling in its own challenge to New York’s post-Bruen carry restrictions, Judge Glenn Suddaby of the Northern District of New York halted key provisions and said the state could not ban guns from public places like Times Square. Whatever came after, the Times Square ban is on the books today, the state is defending it, and a licensed carrier who crosses the wrong block in Midtown is looking at a felony.

“When New York tried to nullify Bruen by banning carry nearly everywhere people actually go, FPC immediately took action and we continue to tear apart that unconstitutional regime here. FPC and our Grassroots Army will Fight Forward until the People can freely exercise their right to bear arms throughout the United States, including throughout New York City,” Combs said. FPC says it has been fighting location-based carry bans in New York, Maryland, New Jersey, and California, and that Goldberger is one front in that campaign.

More from USA Carry:

• Behind the Dry Fire – August 14, 2025
• 10 Things Concealed Carriers Should Never Do
• 4 Ways to Deter and Prevent Active Shooter Situations
• Force-on-Force Training: Why you Need It
• .30 Super Carry: New “Revolutionary” Carry Round?

That felony exposure is the mindset piece. Carrying responsibly in New York City means knowing not just whether you are licensed but exactly where an invisible line turns a lawful act into one to four years. A ban on a neighborhood, rather than a building, puts that burden on every ordinary trip through the center of the city. Goldberger v. James is about whether the state gets to keep that line at all, and the motion to dismiss is about whether the Attorney General gets to sit the fight out. The court has not ruled on the motion.

I will continue tracking Goldberger v. James as the court takes up the motion to dismiss.

Read the original story: Felony for Carrying on a Times Square Sidewalk: FPC Tells Court Letitia James Cannot Escape Lawsuit Over New York’s Carry Ban

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

GRAY, TN — A man who was thrown to the ground and had his prosthetic leg detached during a fight outside a Gray smoke shop in August will not face charges for the four shots he fired, District Attorney General Steve Finney’s office announced Tuesday. The man who attacked him, 24-year-old Dalton Spaulding, was found dead in the parking lot outside A1 Smoke and Vape.

Finney’s office concluded that Spaulding was the primary aggressor in the altercation, as reported by WCYB. The First Judicial District Attorney General’s release, as reported by WJHL, says the Johnson City Police Department investigation found the confrontation started when Spaulding accused the man of looking at Spaulding’s grandfather in a disrespectful manner.

A look. That is what this started over.

The accusation turned physical. Spaulding threw the man to the ground. The impact detached the man’s prosthetic leg. The fighting continued. The man fired four rounds. Three struck Spaulding in the chest and arm, according to WJHL. Spaulding died there in the parking lot.

I keep coming back to the disparity here. A man with a prosthetic leg is on the pavement, and the leg he needs to stand up, retreat, or even square up to defend himself is no longer attached to his body. A 24-year-old who has already thrown him down is still coming. There is no running from that position, and there is no fair fight from that position either. The attacker holds every physical advantage, and the man on the ground has exactly one way to end it.

Finney said multiple witness statements and surveillance video supported the finding that the man acted in self-defense. Those two kinds of evidence matter more than anything the shooter could have said for himself. Independent witnesses and a camera put the sequence on the record without relying on the defender’s own account, and that is what let the DA’s office make a clean call.

More from USA Carry:

• PaintCam: The Security System That Fights Back with Paintballs and Tear Gas
• North Carolina Vape Store Worker Injured in Robbery; Suspect Shot While Fleeing
• The Defense Of Mere Property
• Home Defense Preparations for Civil Unrest
• Mask, Gloves, and a Gun: Florence Vape Shop Employee Fires on Armed Robber Loading Cash Into a Bag

The man who fired has not been publicly identified. He will not be charged.

Spaulding is dead at 24 over a perceived slight to his grandfather. Nobody in that parking lot needed to be there for any of it, and the one person who had no way to leave is the one who walked away without charges.

Read the original story: Thrown Down, Prosthetic Leg Torn Off, Still Under Attack: Gray Man Fired Four Shots and the DA Calls It Self-Defense

Key Takeaways

• The Third Circuit ruled the federal felon-in-possession statute unconstitutional for Edward A. Williams, who had DUI convictions.
• The court emphasized the Second Amendment’s significance and questioned the long-standing nature of the felon ban.
• Williams unknowingly owned firearms until 2015, when he learned he was prohibited due to past DUI convictions.
• The court distinguished Williams’s non-violent DUIs from laws that aimed to prevent armed violence and rejected the government’s 925(c) restoration process argument.
• This ruling does not remove the felon ban universally, but it highlights flaws in applying it to non-violent offenders like Williams.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

PHILADELPHIA, PA — The en banc Third Circuit ruled on October 13, 2026, that the federal felon-in-possession statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), is unconstitutional as applied to Edward A. Williams, a Pennsylvania man whose only predicate offenses were two convictions for driving under the influence in the early 2000s. The court affirmed a declaratory judgment from Judge John M. Younge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. A declaratory judgment is a court order stating what the law is as to a specific person, in this case that the ban cannot be enforced against him.

The opinion opens in the court’s own voice, calling the Second Amendment “a primary protection against tyranny, a strong bulwark securing American liberty, and an indispensable means of defending the public good,” and saying courts testing restrictions on these “most sacred” and “necessary” rights must weigh the history and tradition of firearm regulations “with care and rigor.” That is the framework the Supreme Court set in Bruen, stated here as the court’s own premise.

Then come the facts, and they are the heart of this case. Pennsylvania grades DUI by blood alcohol concentration, and the statute gives each tier a name: “general impairment” runs from 0.08 to just under 0.10 percent, “high rate of alcohol” from 0.10 to just under 0.16, and “highest rate of alcohol” at 0.16 or above. In 2000, Williams was charged with driving with a BAC above 0.10 percent, the middle tier, and entered a Pennsylvania diversion program. In 2004 he was arrested again, and in 2005 he was convicted of driving with a BAC of 0.16 percent or higher, the top tier. Because it was a second offense, that conviction was punishable by up to five years in prison. He was sentenced to between ninety days and two years and served it in home confinement. The court notes that the second conviction, in its words, “unbeknownst to him” triggered § 922(g)(1), which bars anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison from possessing a firearm.

That “unbeknownst to him” is the detail I keep coming back to. Williams went on owning firearms, worked at a gun store where the ATF background-checked and cleared him, and bought a new gun, answering “no” when the Pennsylvania sale form asked whether he had ever been convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year. It was not until 2015, when his own attorney told him, that he learned he was a prohibited person. He then divested every firearm he owned and stopped buying or possessing guns. When he later applied for a Pennsylvania License to Carry, the FBI’s background check flagged the 2005 DUI and he was denied.

On the law, the court held that permanently disarming all felons is not a long-standing American practice. It dates the felon ban to the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which reached only people convicted of a “crime of violence,” and a 1961 amendment that abandoned the focus on violence for a technical bar keyed to any crime punishable by more than a year. From there the court worked through the elements of Williams’s DUI offense, found it contains no threatening or violent element, and rejected the government’s historical analogy to old “habitual drunkard” laws, which it said were aimed at protecting drunkards and their families rather than at preventing armed violence. The record showed Williams had done nothing violent in over twenty years, held the same job for three decades, and posed no present danger.

The government’s fallback was the administrative restoration process under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c), which it argued turns a permanent ban into a temporary one. That process sat dormant for roughly three decades after Congress defunded it in 1992, and the Attorney General only revived it in 2025, granting relief to a trickle of applicants by invitation. The court was unmoved: “Our duty is to decide the case based on present facts, not future promises.” It closed on redemption, writing that with rehabilitation “comes restoration of the civic privileges guaranteed to citizens by the Constitution, and the freedom to again exercise the natural right of armed defense against threats and tyranny.”

Two pieces of legal language matter here. First, the ruling is “as applied,” meaning the court held the statute cannot be enforced against Williams on his facts; it did not strike § 922(g)(1) for everyone. Second, the court sat en banc, the full bench rather than a three-judge panel. Judge Matey wrote the opinion of the court, joined by Judges Hardiman, Bibas, Porter, Phipps, Bove, and Mascott. Chief Judge Chagares concurred in the judgment but would require future claimants to run the § 925(c) process first, excusing Williams only because of the nine years his case had already spent in court. The affirmance was not unanimous. Judge Shwartz, joined by Judges Krause and Restrepo, dissented, arguing a recidivist DUI is a dangerous offense that disarms and that Williams should have exhausted § 925(c). Judge Freeman, joined by Judges Montgomery-Reeves and Chung, agreed Williams need not exhaust but dissented from the judgment, arguing the case should go back for factfinding on whether he is dangerous now.

More from USA Carry:

• Washington’s High Court Says the State Can Take Your Guns Over DUIs, Even If You Never Touched One
• Third Circuit Strikes Down New Jersey’s Semiautomatic Rifle and 10-Round Magazine Bans as Unconstitutional
• Magazine Ban and Licensing Rules Back in Play as D.C. Court Grants Benson En Banc Rehearing
• Armed Bystander Shoots Back at Man who Fired at Crowd; Stops Potential Mass Shooting
• Road Worker Shoots Alleged Carjacker During Violent Incident in Crisp County, GA

This is a narrow win for one man, not a wipeout of the felon ban. But the shape of it is hard to miss. The government defended a lifetime prohibition on a man with two decades-old DUIs, told the court he should wait on an administrative process the court itself calls rarely received, and lost in front of the full circuit.

I will continue tracking Williams v. Attorney General, including any move by the government to take it to the Supreme Court.

Read the original story: Two DUIs From the Early 2000s, a Lifetime Gun Ban He Never Knew He Had: Third Circuit En Banc Rules the Felon Ban Unconstitutional as Applied to a Pennsylvania Man

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

VALDOSTA, GA — A 28-year-old man shopping inside a Dollar General on Bemiss Road drew his firearm on a man who was beating a woman in the head Thursday afternoon, then fired once when the attacker turned and charged him, according to the Valdosta Police Department.

Police say the woman was the attacker’s girlfriend, and she was in the store with her teenage daughter when the beating started, as reported by WCTV. The call came in around 4:50 p.m. from the 2100 block of Bemiss Road.

A citizen dialed 911 to report a man hitting a woman inside the store. VPD officers and detectives were already en route when the caller told the dispatcher that someone had been shot.

Officers found the 28-year-old in the parking lot and detained him without incident. Inside, they found Tevin Jay Love, 32, with a gunshot wound to the torso. Another person was holding him down. Officers gave Love first aid before he was taken to the hospital, where police say he is in stable condition.

Officers then located the woman, who told them Love had assaulted her. She was taken to the hospital, treated, and released.

Detectives laid out the sequence from there. Love walked into the store and began striking his girlfriend in the head, police say. Her teenage daughter tried to stop him. He hit the teen too.

That is when the 28-year-old, who police say was shopping in the store, drew his firearm and moved to stop the assault. The woman got away from Love. The shopper tried to hold Love at gunpoint. Love charged him. Love started hitting him. The shopper fired one round and struck Love.

A drawn gun did not stop Love. He went straight through it and started throwing punches at an armed man. The shopper had already been watching a woman take blows to the head and a teenager get hit for trying to stop it, so the danger to others in that store was never in question. Once Love charged him, the fight became the shopper’s own, and any remaining argument about whether he faced a serious threat went away with it.

Stepping in for a stranger is the hardest call an armed citizen makes. You are walking into a fight you did not see start, with no idea whether the attacker is armed or whether someone else is about to come in behind you. This shopper saw a beating, committed to stopping it, and still held fire until the attacker came at him. The gear was secondary. The mindset to recognize an assault for what it was, act on it, and keep the gun as a last resort rather than a first one is the whole story.

“This citizen observed a female getting viciously beaten by the offender, and he took action to stop the physical assault against her, even putting his life in danger,” Chief Leslie Manahan said in the release. “Because of his quick actions, the assault against the female stopped, preventing her from receiving more violent injuries.”

More from USA Carry:

• Shooting Death Ruled Self-Defense after Man was Followed Home
• Shoppers Flee After Man Negligently Shoots Himself in Leg at North Carolina Mall
• Confrontation at Dog Park Leads to Self-Defense Shooting
• Concealed Carrier Draws From The Drop, Shoots Suspect
• Dad Pulls CCW in Gun-Free Mall After Gunfire Erupts

Detectives obtained arrest warrants on Love for terroristic threat, a felony, aggravated assault, a felony, simple battery, a misdemeanor, and simple assault, a misdemeanor. Those charges are allegations, and Love is presumed innocent unless convicted.

Police have not identified the shopper. He was detained in the parking lot, the chief has publicly credited him with stopping the assault, and no charging decision regarding him has been announced.

Read the original story: Valdosta Shopper Draws on Man Beating Girlfriend and Her Teen Daughter in Dollar General, Fires Once When Attacker Charges Him

Key Takeaways

• A woman shot a man who hit her with his car in Indianapolis early Monday morning.
• Police arrested the man on preliminary charges of domestic battery with a deadly weapon.
• The woman was released after consultation with the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, indicating she acted in self-defense.
• The relationship between the woman and the man remains unclear, but the charge suggests a non-stranger interaction.
• Police believe the incident was isolated and have not released the identities of either party.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

INDIANAPOLIS, IN — A woman who police say was hit by a man’s car on the east side of Indianapolis early Monday morning shot him, and after a consultation with the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, she was the one released while he went to jail.

According to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, as reported by WTHR, officers responded to the 2200 block of North Shadeland Avenue, near East 21st Street, on a report of a person shot around 7:15 a.m. Monday, Sept. 28. They found a man with a gunshot wound. IMPD said he was in stable condition.

Police said the shooter was a woman. She was detained at the scene. She was later released following a consultation with the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office because, according to police, the man hit her with a car before she fired.

Police have not released either person’s name, and they have not described the sequence in any more detail than that. What they did do is charge the man. IMPD aggravated assault detectives arrested him on a preliminary charge of domestic battery with a deadly weapon.

That charge tells you how investigators read the car. A vehicle driven into a person is a deadly weapon, and the preliminary charge names it as one. A woman who has just been struck by a car has no way of knowing whether the driver is finished, and she has no realistic way to outrun him if he is not.

The word “domestic” in that charge matters too. Police did not describe the relationship between the two, but the charge designation suggests this was not a stranger encounter. The mindset you carry with has to account for that. The threat is as likely to arrive in a car you recognize as from someone you have never seen before, and the decision to act does not get easier because you know the person behind the wheel.

More from USA Carry:

• SAF Files for Preliminary Injunction Against Illinois Carry Ban
• New Orleans Man Shoots 16-Year-Old in the Butt After Teen Points Gun at Him During 2 A.M. Car Break-In
• Man Attacks Two Women, Stabs One Gets Shot and Killed By The Other
• Indianapolis Resident Turns Tables in Home Invasion, Fatally Shoots Intruder with His Own Gun
• Man Shot After Confronting Suspected Vehicle Burglars in Baton Rouge

The man’s charge is preliminary and an allegation, and he is presumed innocent unless convicted. The woman’s release after the prosecutor consult is a strong early signal, but it is not a formal self-defense determination, and no final charging decision has been announced.

Police said they believe the incident was isolated.

Read the original story: Indianapolis Woman Shoots Man Who Hit Her With His Car in 7 A.M. East Side Attack, Released After Prosecutor Review While He Faces Charges

Key Takeaways

• An Airbnb renter shot 18-year-old Dareon Pubien after two armed men broke into the rental in Fort Lauderdale.
• Pubien ran from the scene but was found by police, undergoing surgery and listed in critical but stable condition.
• Sean Thompson, 25, was arrested alongside Pubien; both face charges of attempted felony murder and home invasion.
• No charges have been reported against the renter, who was armed during the incident.
• The case highlights the importance of carrying protection while traveling, as criminals do not discriminate based on residency.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL — An Airbnb renter shot an 18-year-old in the chest Thursday evening after two armed men broke into the rental and confronted him, according to the Fort Lauderdale Police Department.

Police told CBS Miami the two men broke into the Fort Lauderdale Airbnb around 6 p.m. on Sept. 24 and got into an altercation with the renter, as reported by the New York Post. The renter, who has not been identified, was armed.

He fired. Dareon Pubien, 18, took a round to the chest. Pubien ran out of the house on foot.

He did not get far. Officers followed a trail of his blood around the corner and found him there, police said. He was taken to a local hospital, where he underwent surgery and was listed in critical but stable condition.

Arthur Butler Jr., who lives across the street, heard the shots and called 911. “Maybe at least 10, and then everybody was running,” he told CBS Miami. Police have not detailed how many rounds were fired or by whom, and Butler’s count is one neighbor’s estimate from across the street.

The second man, Sean Thompson, 25, of Margate, was also arrested. Both men are charged with attempted felony murder and home invasion with a firearm. Thompson was ordered held without bond. Pubien will be arraigned once he is released from the hospital. The charges are allegations, and both men are presumed innocent unless convicted.

No charges against the renter have been reported, and police have not publicly characterized his actions beyond describing the break-in and the shooting.

The part of this story that applies to every armed traveler is simple. The renter was not at home. He was in a short-term rental, somewhere he did not own and may not have known well, and two armed men came through the door anyway. Criminals do not check whether you are a resident or a guest before they pick a house. A gun locked in a safe three states away does nothing for you at 6 p.m. on a Thursday in Fort Lauderdale.

More from USA Carry:

• Should You Hold Someone At Gunpoint Until Police Arrive?
• Florida Homeowner Warned Intruder to Leave—When He Refused, He Shot Him in Self-Defense
• Jewelry Store Employee w/ CCW Shoots Two In Robbery Attempt
• The 18-Year-Old Almost Made this Mistake
• Armed Mom Rushes Home to Daughter in Danger Instead of Waiting for Police

Mindset travels with you whether you plan for it or not. The hardware only comes along if you bring it. If you carry at home, carry when you are away, and know the law where you are headed before you get there.

Pubien is in the hospital awaiting arraignment. Thompson sits in jail without bond. The renter has not been named.

Read the original story: Fort Lauderdale Airbnb Renter Shoots 18-Year-Old Intruder in the Chest After Two Armed Men Break In at 6 P.M.

Key Takeaways

• Firearms Policy Coalition sent a letter to Alaska’s Attorney General asking for changes to state laws that require compliance with the federal National Firearms Act (NFA).
• The letter questions whether residents must still abide by enjoined federal regulations for suppressors and other weapons under state law.
• The letter highlights that federal courts have ruled against the NFA’s tax and registration requirements, creating confusion for state laws linked to these provisions.
• FPC urges the AG to stop enforcing state laws dependent on the now-invalid federal process while proposing a partnership for a resolution.
• No states have officially responded yet, and gun owners should consult legal advice considering varying state laws and potential enforcement changes.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

ANCHORAGE, AK — Lawyers for Firearms Policy Coalition sent a letter dated October 9, 2026, to Alaska Acting Attorney General Cori Mills, asking her office to address state laws that tie the legality of suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and “any other weapons” to compliance with a federal National Firearms Act registration process a federal court has enjoined. The letter frames the question in one sentence: “Must state residents still comply with unconstitutional, enjoined federal regulations to exercise their right to keep and bear the arms under state law?”

Alaska is one of 15 states on FPC’s list. In its announcement, FPC said its lawyers sent letters to the attorneys general of Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin, each of which still ties the legality of these arms to the federal NFA registration process, and is asking those states to immediately stop enforcement while lawmakers repeal the laws for good. Last week I covered ATF Stops Requiring NFA Approval and Registration for Suppressors, SBRs, SBSs, and AOWs Nationwide Effective October 9, 2026. This is the next move. ATF has stepped back from the federal paperwork, and FPC is now going after the state statutes that still point at it.

The letter walks through how the federal side got here. The NFA was passed in 1934 as a tax, with registration in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, fingerprints, photographs, local law enforcement notification, and prior ATF approval built on top of it to collect that tax. On July 4, 2025, Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut the making and transfer tax on suppressors, SBRs, SBSs, and AOWs to $0 effective January 1, 2026, and left every piece of the registration machinery in place. On August 5, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas held in Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, consolidated with Jensen v. ATF, that the challenged provisions, including 26 U.S.C. §§ 5812, 5822, 5841, and 5861, could no longer stand under Congress’s taxing power. As FPC put it, Congress eliminated the tax, and with it the constitutional basis the government had relied on for the machinery built to collect that tax. The court issued a party-specific injunction, meaning it bars ATF and DOJ from enforcing those provisions against untaxed firearms held by the plaintiffs and those covered by the judgment, not everyone in the country.

Per the Second Amendment Foundation, the injunction took effect August 13 after the government let the judge’s deadline pass without seeking to extend the stay, and on October 9 ATF published guidance saying it would cease enforcement that day of NFA provisions as applied to short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, silencers, and any other weapons. The guidance limits that nonenforcement to firearms on which Congress eliminated the taxes. On the federal side, that is where things stand. State law is a different book.

That is the problem the letter puts in front of Alaska. According to FPC’s lawyers, a number of states wrote statutes that condition the lawful possession or transfer of these arms on compliance with the NFA. A law like that worked as a shortcut for decades: if the federal government approved your tax stamp, the state treated the gun as legal. The letter’s argument is that the shortcut now runs through a process a federal court has enjoined and ATF has said it will not enforce, and the state is left demanding compliance with federal paperwork the federal government itself has set aside. The letter asks for the attorney general’s attention and offers FPC’s partnership in “crafting a prompt resolution.”

I think FPC picked the right pressure point. Attorneys general do not repeal statutes, but they do decide what their offices enforce and what guidance goes to local prosecutors, and an AG who tells the state’s prosecutors to stand down buys gun owners time while a legislature does the permanent work. The letter also notes this is not a one-court fight. Challenges to the NFA are moving in other circuits, including the FPC-backed Brown v. ATF in the Eastern District of Missouri and Roberts v. ATF in the Eastern District of Kentucky, so the pressure on the federal scheme is not going to let up while the states sort out their own codes.

A few things need to stay in frame. This is a letter, not a court order. No state has to answer it, and none of the sources I reviewed show a response from Alaska or any other office. The injunction protects the plaintiffs and, per Gun Owners of America’s FAQ on the ruling, the current and future members and customers covered by the order, with plaintiffs that include Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, Silencer Shop Foundation, B&T USA, Palmetto State Armory, SilencerCo, Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition, and Brady Wetz, along with the Jensen plaintiffs SAF lists. GOA’s own FAQ warns that state and local laws may add restrictions and tells gun owners to consult an attorney before acting. That is the practical reality in all 15 of these states until something changes on the books or at the AG’s desk.

More from USA Carry:

• $25 for Two Memberships: SAF’s Pitch After a Texas Court Enjoined NFA Registration Rules for Suppressors and SBRs
• Alaska Concealed Carry
• A Federal Court Threw Out New Jersey’s Rifle and Magazine Bans. The State Is Asking to Keep Enforcing Them Anyway
• Alaska Proposes ‘Safe Schools Act’ Mandating Concealed Carry on Campus
• Thirteen Senators Demand Trump Administration Stop Enforcing Biden Pistol Brace Rule

The mindset lesson is the same one I preach on carry. Federal law sets a floor, not your whole legal picture. I keep state-by-state concealed carry permit information because the state line changes what you can lawfully do with the gun on your hip, and the NFA fight is proving the same thing for the suppressor on your rifle. A federal win you cannot use at home is not finished. FPC’s letters are an attempt to finish it.

I will continue tracking the state responses to FPC’s letters, along with the Silencer Shop/Jensen injunction and the Brown and Roberts challenges as they move through the courts.

Read the original story: FPC Lawyers Ask Alaska and 14 Other States to Stop Enforcing Laws That Hinge Suppressors and SBRs on an Enjoined Federal NFA Process

Key Takeaways

• Maine stopped recognizing concealed carry permits from Arkansas, Indiana, South Dakota, and Tennessee without explanation.
• The Maine State Police reciprocity page no longer lists these four states despite Maine’s law requiring recognition of permits from states that honor its permit.
• Maine’s recognition law remains unchanged, and all four states still honor Maine’s permit, raising questions about this sudden change.
• Not having a recognized permit in Maine affects interactions with law enforcement and carrying rights in state parks.
• Updates to the concealed carry permit reciprocity maps reflect this change, and travelers should check the maps before carrying in Maine.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Update October 13: I received the following email when I asked why those states were removed:

Thank you for your question. Our Office is looking into the matter.

Maine State Police, Weapons and Professional Licensing Unit

AUGUSTA, ME — Maine has stopped honoring concealed carry permits from Arkansas, Indiana, South Dakota, and Tennessee, four states it historically recognized and four states that still honor Maine’s permit. No explanation has been offered.

My friends at Concealed Carry Inc caught this first, and their article is what tipped me off. The Maine State Police reciprocity page, which is built on research from the Maine Attorney General’s Office, no longer lists the four states.

Maine’s recognition law, 25 M.R.S. § 2001-A(2)(F), does not leave room for this. Maine honors a permit from any state that honors Maine’s permit. There is no formal agreement to sign and no paperwork for the other state to file. Some states will not recognize another state’s permit until both sides have signed a written reciprocity agreement. Maine is not one of them. If your state recognizes a Maine permit, Maine recognizes yours, agreement or not. I lay out the rest of the state’s rules in my Maine concealed carry guide.

Arkansas, Indiana, South Dakota, and Tennessee each honor every state’s permit, Maine’s included. That is the only condition Maine’s law sets, and all four meet it. The statute did not change. The four states did not change. The list did, and nobody has said why.

Maine is a permitless carry state, so some readers will ask why any of this matters. It matters because a recognized permit still does things in Maine that permitless carry does not. Without an honored permit you have to declare your firearm to law enforcement on official contact. With one, you do not. Permit holders can carry in state parks. Carriers relying only on permitless carry cannot. Then there is the school zone question on top of that. Knowing what your permit does and does not do in the state you are driving into is the travel mindset I would bring to any trip, and it beats assuming permitless carry covers everything.

More from USA Carry:

• Concealed Handgun License No Longer Needed in Maine
• Maine Bills Seek Improvement in Carry Laws
• Maine’s 72-Hour Gun Wait Survives Court Challenge as First Circuit Reverses Lower Court Ruling
• SAF and NRA Ask the Supreme Court to Kill Maine’s Firearm Waiting Period After the First Circuit Ruled Buying a Gun Isn’t “Keeping” or “Bearing”
• Maine Concealed Carry Permit Information

I have updated the USA Carry concealed carry permit reciprocity maps to reflect the change. If you hold a permit from one of these four states and plan to carry in Maine, check the map before you go and plan around permitless carry rules until the State Police list changes again.

I will continue tracking this. I have reached out to the Maine State Police Weapons and Professional Licensing Unit for a statement, and I will update this article and the maps if and when I hear back.

Read the original story: Maine Quietly Drops Permit Reciprocity With Four States That Still Honor Its Permit, and Nobody Has Said Why

Key Takeaways

• A 77-year-old woman shot a 57-year-old man in self-defense after he pushed her into her vehicle and assaulted her in a Macclenny parking lot.
• The incident occurred early morning at the Macclenny Veterinary Hospital as part of her routine to feed stray cats.
• Deputies report that the woman used a handgun from her vehicle to defend herself during the assault.
• Residents describe the area as normally peaceful, and the woman had no time to wait for help before acting.
• The investigation is ongoing, and the sheriff’s office has not yet released the woman’s name.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

MACCLENNY, FL — A 77-year-old woman who gets up before dawn almost every day to feed stray cats shot and killed a 57-year-old man who pushed her into her own vehicle and kept assaulting her Monday morning in the parking lot of Macclenny Veterinary Hospital, and the Baker County Sheriff’s Office says its preliminary investigation indicates she acted in self-defense.

Deputies responded to the veterinary hospital around 4:30 a.m. after a report of a shooting, as reported by First Coast News. Undersheriff Randy Crews identified the man as Alvin Tisdale, 57, and said the woman is well known to deputies and to the community because she goes to numerous businesses around Baker County nearly every day to feed stray cats. She was in the lot Monday as part of that routine.

According to Crews, Tisdale approached her in the parking lot. He pushed her into her vehicle. He kept assaulting her. She reached into the vehicle, retrieved her handgun, and fired one round at him. Tisdale was taken to the hospital, where he died.

The handgun was in the vehicle, not on her body, and she had to reach for it while the assault was still underway. That it was close enough to reach is the only reason it mattered. A gun locked in a glove box or buried under a seat would not have been. Where you stage a firearm is a mindset decision you make long before anyone tests it.

A 57-year-old man pushing a 77-year-old woman into a car and continuing to assault her is the threat. She did not have to wait to learn what he intended once the door closed. Residents told First Coast News this is normally a quiet, peaceful part of Baker County, and at 4:30 in the morning in a rural parking lot, help was not going to arrive in time. The handgun gave her an option she otherwise did not have.

More from USA Carry:

• Robbery Suspect and Armed Victim Both Shot After Struggle Over Gun in Missouri Market
• West Seattle Woman Fatally Shot After Confronting Process Servers with Shotgun
• Pennsylvania Man Who Shot Dog Attacking Cat Not Charged
• Homeowner Defends Family from Intruder Who Fatally Stabbed a 77-Year-Old Woman Days Prior
• Woman Playing w/ Cat Using Gun’s Laser Shoots Friend Negligently

Tisdale’s nephew, Akeem Brown, told First Coast News he learned of his uncle’s death on Facebook and could not believe it. “I just hope and pray that the lady is all right, and I’m sorry for my uncle’s loss and our family,” he said.

The sheriff’s office has not released the woman’s name. The investigation remains active, and no charging decision has been reported.

Read the original story: 77-Year-Old Woman Out Feeding Stray Cats at 4:30 A.M. Shoots and Kills Man Who Pushed Her Into Her Car and Kept Assaulting Her Outside Macclenny Vet Hospital

Key Takeaways

• Two Henrico residents found an unknown man, Steven Alan Jones, 39, lying in their bed on October 2, 2026, leading to a fatal shooting.
• Jones was pronounced dead at the scene, and three adults were detained for questioning after the altercation.
• Police report that the residents did not know Jones, and details about the incident remain unclear with no charges filed.
• Investigators emphasize the unusual scenario of a stranger entering an occupied home unnoticed, prompting further investigation.
• Authorities urge anyone with information to contact the police or submit tips anonymously.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

HENRICO COUNTY, VA — Two Henrico residents came home Friday night and found a man they did not know lying in a bed upstairs, and the altercation that followed ended with that man shot dead in the bedroom, according to Henrico Police. After consulting with the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, police say no charges will be placed at this time.

Officers responded to the 1600 block of Hilliard Road in the Fairfield Magisterial District around 10:30 p.m. on Friday, October 2, 2026, for a reported shooting. They found an adult male in a bedroom with obvious signs of trauma. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Three adults, two men and a woman, were detained for questioning.

Detectives identified the deceased as Steven Alan Jones, 39, of Gloucester. Police say it does not appear Jones was known to any of the three adults involved.

According to the preliminary investigation, one of the men and the woman returned home and found Jones lying in an upstairs bed. The third man had been in the house the whole time but did not report anything suspicious before Jones was discovered. A stranger got inside an occupied home, up the stairs, and into a bed without the person already there noticing. That is the part I would want every reader to think about before worrying about anything else in this story.

An altercation broke out between the three men. Jones was shot. He died in that bedroom.

Police have not described what happened during the altercation, who fired, or what Jones did once he was found. Those details are what the Commonwealth’s Attorney weighed, and they are not public.

More from USA Carry:

• Scranton Man Charged With Homicide After Pocono Homeowner Dies in Bedroom Gunfight
• Son Defends Mother From Three Home Invaders, Kills One
• Virginia Homeowner Confronts Then Shoots Man Trying To Break In Through Window
• Father Shoots Kills Strange Man In Daughter’s Bedroom
• Memphis Man Grazed by Bullet After Dog Jumps on Bed Where He and Friend Were Lying and Allegedly Fires Gun

The residents of this house are not identified, and no one has been charged. The decision not to place charges was made after consultation with the Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office and a review of the current evidence, which police describe as a decision for now rather than a closed file. Investigators are still asking anyone with information to contact Det. J. Seay at (804) 501-7323 or Crime Stoppers at (804) 780-1000, or to submit a tip through P3tips.com.

Three people walked through their own front door on a Friday night and found a man none of them recognized lying upstairs in the dark. The one who was already home never knew he was there. Minutes later the man was dead, and for the moment, prosecutors have decided no one will answer for it in court.

Read the original story: Virginia Residents Come Home Friday Night to Find a Stranger Lying in an Upstairs Bed; Altercation Ends With Him Shot Dead and No Charges for Now

Key Takeaways

• A New Orleans homeowner shot and killed an intruder, Tyree Parker, who attempted to break into his house early Friday morning.
• Police confirmed the homeowner will not face charges, as they believe he acted in self-defense.
• Details about the incident remain unclear, including whether the intruder was armed or how he tried to enter the home.
• The homeowner cooperated with police, contributing to the decision not to file charges against him.
• NOPD framed the incident as a defense against an imminent threat, not a burglary.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

NEW ORLEANS, LA — A New Orleans homeowner shot and killed a man who was trying to break into his house shortly before 7 a.m. Friday, and by that afternoon the New Orleans Police Department had already said he will not be charged.

Officers responded to the 1400 block of Harrison Avenue on the morning of Oct. 2 and found a man with a gunshot wound, as reported by WVUE. New Orleans EMS later pronounced him dead. The New Orleans Coroner identified him as 29-year-old Tyree Parker.

On Friday afternoon, NOPD officials confirmed the man who fired did so because Parker was trying to break into his house. Officers believe he was defending himself and others during the incident, police said. The homeowner is cooperating with officers and will not face charges.

That is the entire public record so far, and it is thin. Police have not said whether Parker was armed, how he tried to get in, or who else was inside. The homeowner has not been named. What NOPD has said is narrow and specific: a man was trying to force his way into an occupied house, the man inside fired, and officers believe he was defending himself and the other people there.

More from USA Carry:

• New Orleans Police Department Implements Questionable “Gun-Free Zone” in French Quarter in Response to Permitless Carry Law
• Security Guard w/ CCW Stops Shooting; Dies from Gun Shot Wounds
• Armed Citizen Stops Attack by Ex-Boyfriend; Not the Protection Order
• New Orleans Man Shoots 16-Year-Old in the Butt After Teen Points Gun at Him During 2 A.M. Car Break-In
• Philadelphia Resident Fights Off Suspect Who Cased the Block for 10 Minutes, Then Forced Through the Front Door at 6:20 A.M.

The hour matters. Shortly before 7 a.m. is when people are home, and a man working to get through the door of a house with people inside is a threat to the people, not to the drywall. Deadly force is only ever about an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm to a person, and that is exactly the way NOPD framed what its officers believe happened here. The department did not describe a burglary. It described a man defending himself and others.

The homeowner’s conduct afterward is the other piece. He is cooperating with officers. That cooperation is a large part of why a department could say, within hours, that it believes he was defending himself and that it does not intend to charge him. Investigators had a willing account from the man who fired instead of a stranger to track down, and that shapes the charging decision as much as the facts of the fight do.

Read the original story: New Orleans Homeowner Shoots and Kills 29-Year-Old Trying to Break Into His House Before 7 A.M., and NOPD Says He Will Not Be Charged

Key Takeaways

• A federal judge upheld Maryland’s ban on Glocks and striker-fired handguns, allowing it to take effect on January 1, 2027.
• Judge Richard D. Bennett denied the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction, stating that the law aligns with Second Amendment regulations.
• Senate Bill 334 prohibits the sale and transfer of machine gun convertible pistols, including Glocks, due to potential modifications into fully automatic weapons.
• The ruling underscores that the state justifies this ban as a necessary response to advances in weapon technology and rising gun violence.
• The case is ongoing, and the judge suggested that the challengers were unlikely to win, which led to the denial of the emergency order.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

BALTIMORE, MD — A federal judge has refused to block Maryland’s ban on the sale of Glocks and other striker-fired handguns, leaving the law on track to take effect January 1, 2027, while the lawsuit against it continues.

U.S. Senior District Judge Richard D. Bennett denied the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction in a memorandum opinion filed October 5 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. A preliminary injunction is an emergency order that would have stopped the state from enforcing the law while the case plays out. Bennett ruled from the bench against the challengers at a September 25 hearing and issued this written opinion to explain his reasoning. The challengers are a deep bench of gun owners, dealers, and 2A groups, including the National Rifle Association, the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation, Maryland Shall Issue, and Atlantic Guns. NRA-ILA tracked the bill through the General Assembly in April and called it what it is, a semi-auto ban.

The bill text is where the Glock ban actually lives. Senate Bill 334, signed by Governor Wes Moore and codified as Chapter 771, prohibits manufacturing, selling, offering for sale, purchasing, receiving, or transferring a “machine gun convertible pistol,” subject to narrow exceptions. The statute defines that as “any semiautomatic pistol with a cruciform trigger bar that can be readily converted by hand or by using common household tools into a machine gun by the installation or attachment of a pistol converter as a replacement for the slide’s backplate.” A cruciform trigger bar, under the law, is a component that links the trigger to the firing pin and has its sear built into a cross-shaped surface. That is the design behind Glocks and the Glock-style pistols the ban reaches. Violating it is a misdemeanor punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.

The law even spells out what counts as a common household tool: a screwdriver, a pipe wrench, pliers, a hacksaw, a crowbar, an electric drill, a rotary tool, a hammer, a chisel, a file, and a crescent wrench. The state is not banning a machine gun. It is banning a semiautomatic pistol because someone with a screwdriver and an illegal part could turn it into one.

Bennett’s analysis ran through the Supreme Court’s Bruen framework, which asks two questions. First, does the law touch conduct the Second Amendment’s plain text covers? If it does, the burden shifts to the state to prove the regulation fits the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Bennett found that machine gun convertible pistols, which include popular Glock and Glock-style handguns, likely do fall within the plain text, because handguns are what the Supreme Court has called the quintessential self-defense weapon. That gets the challengers past step one.

Step two is where they lost. Bennett held that Maryland carried its burden by showing SB 334 is “consistent with restrictions on excessively dangerous weapons which have been regulated in response to their criminal misuse and lethality.”

“Machinegun convertible pistols, which can be modified into combat weapons with the insertion of a 3D printed device, implicate technological advances our founders could not have foreseen,” Bennett wrote. “The State has submitted historic evidence supporting that SB 334 is a commensurate response to the advances and to today’s unrelenting tide of mass shootings and gun violence.”

To get there, Bennett leaned heavily on the Fourth Circuit’s en banc decision in Bianchi v. Brown, the ruling that upheld Maryland’s assault weapons ban. An en banc decision is one issued by the full appeals court rather than a three-judge panel, which makes it binding and hard to dislodge. Once the appeals court that governs Maryland has blessed a ban on semiautomatic rifles as fitting a tradition of regulating weapons with a “potential for widespread criminal abuse or unreasonable capacity to inflict casualties,” extending that reasoning to a semiautomatic handgun is a short step, and Bennett took it. He quoted Bianchi’s line that “these are not our forebears’ arms, and these are not our forebears’ calamities.”

The switches that make a Glock fire full-auto are already illegal to possess, and modifying the pistol is already a crime. SB 334 adds nothing for the criminal who does the converting. It takes the pistol off the shelf for the lawful buyer who never would. If you hold a Maryland wear and carry permit and your carry gun is a Glock, this law decides what you can buy in-state once it takes effect, and this ruling means it keeps deciding for now.

The mindset point is simple. The pistol in a law-abiding citizen’s holster is the same hardware the day it is bought and ten years later. The state’s theory is that what some criminal could do to it with a screwdriver makes it too dangerous for you to own. If that reasoning holds, I do not see an obvious limit to it, and the Fourth Circuit has already shown it is willing to let it hold.

More from USA Carry:

• Dollar Store Price Dispute Ends in Gunfire: Clerk Fights Back
• Maryland Legislature Passes Bill Banning Machine Gun Convertible Pistols, Including Some Glocks, Sends It to Governor
• Understanding Excessive Force
• Glock Sues Connecticut in Federal Court to Block ‘Convertible Pistol’ Ban After State Officials Wouldn’t Say Whether Its Handguns Are Legal to Sell
• Kentucky High Court: Guns in Car Legal on Campus

This was a ruling on the injunction only, not a final judgment. Bennett found the challengers had not shown they were likely to win, which under the governing test was enough to deny the emergency order on its own. The case continues toward the merits, and any appeal lands back in the Fourth Circuit, the same court that upheld Maryland’s assault weapons ban.

I will continue tracking the challenge to SB 334 as it moves through the District of Maryland.

Legislative data provided by LegiScan (CC BY 4.0, legiscan.com).

Read the original story: Federal Judge Refuses to Block Maryland’s Glock Ban, Ruling the State Can Regulate ‘Excessively Dangerous Weapons’

Key Takeaways

• A DoorDash driver in Martinez, GA shot a man in self-defense after being threatened and attacked during a confrontation.
• The sheriff’s office determined the driver acted appropriately and will not face charges, pending investigation findings.
• The assailant, identified as Benjamin Robert Dasher, survived surgery for three gunshot wounds and will face charges after recovery.
• Witnesses reported Dasher’s aggressive behavior before he attempted to steal the driver’s vehicle and gun.
• The incident highlights the risks gig drivers face and the importance of situational awareness in hostile encounters.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

MARTINEZ, GA — A 26-year-old DoorDash driver shot a man three times Thursday evening after the man shoved him, came back minutes later to open his car door, announced he was taking the vehicle and the driver’s gun, and then lunged through the open driver’s door, according to the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff’s office says the driver acted in self-defense and that no charges will be filed against him pending the final outcome of the investigation, as reported by WJBF.

Deputies responded to 3830 Washington Road on Oct. 8 and found a white male with multiple gunshot wounds in front of the Cho Ba Mien Asian Market at the West Town Shopping Center. According to the incident report, the DoorDash driver had parked in front of the market at approximately 5:35 p.m. Moments after he got out of his vehicle, a man confronted him and yelled at him to “buy me a 20 piece.” The driver refused. The man shoved him.

Witnesses told deputies the man had been yelling aggressively and offering people $20, though nobody could say what he wanted in return.

Minutes later, the man came back. He told the driver he was going to take his vehicle, walked to the front passenger door, and opened it. The driver was seated in the driver’s seat. He displayed a firearm, told the man he did not want any further trouble, and directed him to leave him alone.

A displayed gun and a direct warning should have ended it. Instead, the man answered that he was going to take the driver’s gun as well. He moved around the vehicle to the driver’s side. He lunged through the open driver’s door. He attacked the driver, who was still seated. The driver fired three rounds. All three struck the man.

That announcement is what matters here. This was never about a car. A man who tells you he is coming for your gun and then comes through your door to get it is not committing a theft, he is trying to disarm you, and a person who takes your firearm by force can use it on you a second later. The threat the sheriff’s office describes is to the driver’s life, not his vehicle, and the sequence shows the driver understood that. He showed the gun first. He warned the man. He fired only when the man was physically on him inside the car.

The driver’s position deserves attention too. He was seated, with the door open, the man already at the passenger side and then moving around the front of the car. There is no backing up and no creating distance from a driver’s seat with a hostile man closing on the door. Gig drivers spend entire shifts alone in parking lots, getting in and out of a vehicle with their hands full, and this is the scenario they should be thinking about. The mindset that kept this driver alive was not the Glock. It was deciding, before anyone opened his door, that he would not be dragged out of his own seat.

The man was taken to Doctors Hospital, where he was in surgery Thursday evening. On Oct. 9, the sheriff’s office identified him as Benjamin Robert Dasher, 29, of Evans. According to the sheriff’s office, Dasher allegedly began acting erratically and violently while being driven home from work and demanded to be let out of the vehicle. He was dropped off in the Walmart parking lot on Bobby Jones Expressway before the confrontation at the shopping center.

Dasher was in the ICU with three gunshot wounds from the driver’s .40-caliber Glock 27: one to the left arm, one to the lower abdomen, and one to the upper abdomen. “According to the treating physician, Dasher is expected to survive, barring complications,” the sheriff’s office said. “Investigators will interview him when his medical condition permits.”

More from USA Carry:

• DoorDash Driver Fires Back After Shots Shatter Windshield in Road Rage Shooting, Teen Dies at Children’s Hospital
• Armed Condo Resident Shoots Knife Attacker Lunging At Another Resident
• What is Your Safe Distance to Engage the Threat: The 21-Foot Rule
• Houston Resident Shoots Man Who Shoved Him at His Own Apartment Door, DA Declines Charges
• DoorDash Driver Indicted for Murder After Shooting Teen Who Tried to Steal His Car in Charlotte

The sheriff’s office says Dasher will be charged with Criminal Attempt-Hijacking a Motor Vehicle when he is released from the hospital. He has not been charged yet, any charge will be an allegation, and he is presumed innocent unless convicted. The investigation remains ongoing, and the no-charges determination for the driver is tied to its final outcome.

The driver has not been publicly identified.

Read the original story: “Buy Me a 20 Piece”: Stranger’s Demand Outside a Georgia Asian Market Escalates to a Shove, an Open Car Door, and Three Rounds From a DoorDash Driver’s Glock

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

LYTLE, TX — A Lytle homeowner shot and killed a hallucinating man who broke into his house at random Sunday night, covered in blood, and cornered him in his bedroom while his wife and children were home, according to Lytle police.

The chain of events started just after 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026, at a home on Butch Cassidy Street in the Saddle Ridge Estates subdivision, as reported by News 4 San Antonio. Lytle Chief of Police and Fire Marshal Richey Priest said 36-year-old Patrick Lee Roy Edwards was hallucinating and aggressive during a disturbance at the home where he lived with a woman and her children.

A 13-year-old girl, the woman’s daughter and not related to Edwards, suffered knife wounds at that first home. Another child escaped the house and called for help. A neighbor also called 911.

Edwards then ran to a nearby house. He was covered in blood. He broke in at random. He cornered the homeowner in his bedroom with the man’s wife and children inside. The homeowner fired. Edwards died at the scene.

Police say Edwards had no connection to the second home. That detail is what makes this encounter so dangerous from the homeowner’s side of it. There was no argument to end, no demand to satisfy, no reason a stranger covered in someone else’s blood was standing in his bedroom. A hallucinating man does not respond to the things that sometimes de-escalate a sober one.

“It unfolded quickly, but any reasonable person would definitely realize that their life is in danger,” Priest said. He added that with the homeowner, his wife, and his children all in the house, he did not know of any option the man could have used that would not have potentially ended in a worse tragedy than the night already was.

Lytle is a small town about 25 miles southwest of San Antonio, and 911 had already been called twice over the first scene before Edwards ever reached the second house. Help was on the way, and it still came down to a man in his bedroom with his family behind him and seconds to act. That is the mindset piece of this story. The call you make, or your neighbor makes, does not stop the threat that is already through your door.

More from USA Carry:

• When to Use a Handgun vs. a Shotgun for Home Defense
• Constitutional Carry Bill Vetoed by Louisiana Governor
• Armed Citizen Stops Man on Seemingly Random Shooting Spree
• Clearing Corners And Doorways With Your Concealed Carry Handgun
• Concealed Carrier Shot w/ His Own Gun After Trying to Stop a Shoplifter

The 13-year-old was taken to University Hospital and released the following day. The Texas Rangers are assisting Lytle police with the investigation at both locations.

Police say the homeowner is not expected to face charges. No formal charging decision has been announced, and the investigation remains ongoing.

Read the original story: Texas Homeowner Shoots and Kills Hallucinating Blood-Covered Intruder Who Broke In at Random and Cornered Him in His Bedroom With Wife and Children Home

Key Takeaways

• Melody Boyer and Natasha Rousseau, alongside gun rights organizations, filed a lawsuit against Colonel Jeffrey S. Katz regarding Virginia’s handgun purchase regulations.
• The lawsuit challenges two statutes: a ban on handgun purchases by those under 21 and a requirement for private firearm sales to undergo background checks.
• Past rulings from the Lynchburg Circuit Court established rights for adults under 21 to purchase handguns, adding weight to the plaintiffs’ argument.
• The complaint seeks a declaratory judgment and an injunction to stop enforcement of the challenged statutes, which plaintiffs argue criminalize private gun sales.
• Boyer v. Katz raises questions about whether the General Assembly can impose restrictions that contradict judicial findings on firearm rights for young adults.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

LYNCHBURG, VA — Two individual plaintiffs, Melody Boyer and Natasha Rousseau, joined by Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, the Virginia Citizens Defense League, and the Virginia Citizens Defense Foundation, have filed suit in the Circuit Court for the City of Lynchburg against Colonel Jeffrey S. Katz, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, in his official capacity. Boyer v. Katz asks the court to declare two Virginia statutes unconstitutional under Article I, Section 13 of the Virginia Constitution and to stop the State Police from enforcing them.

The first statute is Va. Code § 18.2-308.7(C), which makes it unlawful for “any person younger than 21 years of age” to “knowingly and intentionally purchase a handgun or assault firearm anywhere in the Commonwealth.” That subsection is new. HB 1525, reenrolled in the 2026 reconvened session and captioned as an emergency measure, amended § 18.2-308.7 to add the under-21 purchase ban and made a violation a Class 1 misdemeanor. GOA had flagged the bill back in February as one of more than 25 gun control bills still alive after crossover. The second statute is Va. Code § 18.2-308.2:5, which the complaint describes as criminalizing the private sale of firearms unless the buyer first completes a government-administered background check.

The choice of courthouse is the story. The complaint opens by reminding the Lynchburg Circuit Court of its own rulings. In Elhert v. Settle in 2020, according to the filing, this court applied a text-and-history analysis and recognized “the right of adults under 21 to purchase a handgun, the ‘quintessential self-defense weapon,’” borrowing that phrase from Heller. In Wilson v. Settle on December 17, 2024, the complaint says the court “reaffirm[ed] its earlier ruling” that “[i]n Virginia, persons 18 to 20 years of age have a right to bear arms.” And in that litigation the court enjoined the State Police from enforcing § 18.2-308.2:5 because, in the court’s words as quoted in the complaint, it operated to prohibit “the private sale of handguns to adults under 21 years of age.”

The complaint draws the line from that history to today. The background-check statute, it explains, never expressly barred 18-to-20-year-olds from buying a handgun. It simply “required all firearm purchases to be subject to a background check,” and that mechanism is what the court found unconstitutional as applied to young adults. With HB 1525, the General Assembly wrote the purchase ban directly into the Code. So the plaintiffs are asking the same court that already found a right for 18-to-20-year-olds to purchase handguns to look at a statute that now says, in plain words, that they cannot.

The plaintiffs do not stop at the age question. They argue the two statutes “not only prohibit 18-to-20-year-old adult Virginians from purchasing handguns and pejoratively named ‘assault firearms,’ but they also criminalize the private marketplace of firearms that existed in Virginia for centuries.” That second half matters to every Virginian who has ever sold a rifle to a neighbor, not just to the under-21 crowd.

On relief, the filing asks for a declaratory judgment under Va. Code § 8.01-184, which is the court formally stating what the law is, and for a temporary and then permanent injunction under Va. Code § 8.01-620 et seq., which is a court order telling the superintendent, his successors and agents, and any law enforcement agency with notice of the order to stop enforcing the two statutes.

These are allegations in a complaint. The court has not ruled, no case number was assigned when the filing was prepared, and the Commonwealth will get its chance to answer.

More from USA Carry:

• Virginia Man Shot While Allegedly Assaulting Woman During Reckless Car Ride That Ended in a Crash
• Federal Judge Rules Missouri County’s Under-21 Handgun Ban Violated the Second Amendment
• Second Amendment Foundation Fights to Extend Under-21 Handgun Ban Victory Nationwide
• Federal Judge Upholds Connecticut’s Under-21 Handgun Ban, Rejecting SAF and CCDL Challenge on Every Major Issue
• Tennessee Fights to Revive Two Gun Laws a Court Already Called Unconstitutional

What stands out to me is how direct the collision is. A trial court in Lynchburg said, twice, that adults under 21 have a right to bear arms in Virginia and that the state could not use the background-check law to shut them out of buying a handgun. The response from Richmond was a statute that shuts them out by name. Whether the General Assembly can do expressly what this court already said it could not do indirectly is the question Boyer v. Katz puts on the table. Part of a serious carry mindset is knowing exactly what the law in your state allows you to buy and carry, and my Virginia concealed carry guide covers the permit side. The purchase side is now in front of a judge.

I will continue tracking Boyer v. Katz as it moves through the Circuit Court for the City of Lynchburg.

Legislative data provided by LegiScan (CC BY 4.0, legiscan.com).

Read the original story: Back in the Court That Already Said Under-21 Adults Can Buy Handguns: GOA and VCDL Sue Virginia State Police Over New Purchase Ban and Private-Sale Background Check Law

Key Takeaways

• A man was shot and killed while attempting to break into a home on Shoreline Drive early Monday morning.
• Police found him with gunshot wounds and declared him dead at the scene; they are not searching for any suspects.
• Virginia law allows for deadly force if there’s fear of harm during a break-in, but circumstances will determine justification.
• Neighbors described the area as quiet and safe, with no prior incidents reported.
• The investigation is ongoing, and no charging decisions have been made as police look into the situation.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

PORTSMOUTH, VA — A man was shot and killed early Monday morning after he tried to break into a home on Shoreline Drive, according to the Portsmouth Police Department.

Officers arrived at the 3700 block of Shoreline Drive around 3:25 a.m. on a report of a shooting after a break-in, as reported by WTKR News 3. They found a man with gunshot wounds. He was declared dead at the scene.

A PPD spokesperson told the station the dead man was the one who tried to break into the home, and the department is not looking for a suspect. When a police department says that about a fatal shooting, it is telling you the person who fired is already accounted for. That is the frame for everything that follows.

Police have not released the dead man’s name, said who fired, or described what happened once he reached the house. The investigation remains ongoing, and no charging decision has been announced.

The station asked local attorney Eric Korslund for a general read on Virginia law. “You need to know a little more about the circumstances than just that,” Korslund said. “But if somebody does break into your home, I think it’s safe to say you have the right to use deadly force if you’re in any fear of harm or death.”

He is right that the circumstances matter, and we do not have them yet. Deadly force is justified against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm, not against a door or the things behind it. What a forced entry at 3:25 a.m. does is compress that question into seconds, in the dark, for a person who was almost certainly asleep a minute earlier. Whoever fired on Shoreline Drive had to answer it with no time and no information, and investigators will now take weeks to decide whether the answer holds up.

Neighbors told the station this is not that kind of street. One woman said she has lived there more than 30 years and nothing like this has ever happened. Another resident, Ryan Brinkley, said he walks the neighborhood at all hours and has never worried about it. “It’s very nice, very quiet,” he said.

More from USA Carry:

• Homeowner Fatally Shoots Man Kicking His Door Down In ‘Quiet Neighborhood’
• Home Intruder Breaks Into Home In Broad Daylight, Homeowner Responds With Gunfire
• Philadelphia Resident Fights Off Suspect Who Cased the Block for 10 Minutes, Then Forced Through the Front Door at 6:20 A.M.
• Robbery Victim Flees Scene After Shooting, Killing His Attacker
• Robber Calls Police After Being Shot At

I believe them, and that is the point. The quiet street is where most people decide they can leave the gun in the safe and the plan in the back of their mind. The man at the door at 3:25 a.m. did not check the neighborhood’s reputation first. Mindset is the part you carry everywhere, including into a bedroom on a street where nothing ever happens, and it is the part that has to be ready before the banging starts.

A man tried to get into a house on Shoreline Drive before dawn Monday. He died there. Police say they are not looking for anyone else.

Read the original story: Break-In Attempt on a Quiet Portsmouth Street Ends With the Intruder Dead at the Scene

Key Takeaways

• The ATF no longer requires approval or registration for short-barreled rifles, shotguns, silencers, and similar items following a court ruling.
• This change follows the legal case Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF, which eliminated registration due to a tax cut under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
• Despite this, machineguns and destructive devices still require registration and approval; state and local laws remain unaffected.
• ATF continues to operate the NFA system voluntarily, maintaining some application processes and requiring the special occupational tax.
• Individuals should consult local laws, as unregistered NFA items may still be illegal in various states.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

WASHINGTON, DC — The ATF will no longer require anyone to get its approval before making or transferring a short-barreled rifle, short-barreled shotgun, silencer, or “any other weapon,” and it will no longer require those items to be registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. ATF Director Robert Cekada announced the change in an open letter to all federal firearms licensees and the public dated October 9, 2026, and the policy took effect the same day. It applies to everyone otherwise subject to those requirements, not just the parties in the lawsuit that forced the issue.

The lawsuit is Silencer Shop Foundation v. ATF in the Northern District of Texas. According to the letter, a district judge on August 5, 2026 enjoined ATF from enforcing certain NFA provisions as of August 12, 2026. An injunction is a court order telling an agency to stop doing something. The reasoning, as ATF describes it, traces back to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Pub. L. No. 119-21, which cut the NFA making and transfer taxes to $0 for short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, silencers, and “any other weapon[s]” as defined in 26 U.S.C. § 5845(e). With the tax gone, the court held that the NFA’s registration and transfer provisions were no longer an exercise of Congress’s taxing power for those items. The court also held those provisions could not be saved under the interstate commerce power, because Congress did not rely on that power when it passed the NFA in 1934.

The court blocked ATF from administering the approval requirements for making and transferring those items, the registration requirement, and the criminal provisions for making, transferring, receiving, or possessing them unregistered. The letter is careful on one point: the injunction itself applies only to the plaintiffs and to the firearms for which the One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated the tax.

That is why the October 9 letter matters more than the August ruling for most readers. ATF says it has been fielding requests for guidance from litigants, Members of Congress, state Attorneys General, the industry, and the public since the injunction, and that forty-seven Members of the House and Senate, led by Rep. Andrew Clyde, asked ATF to apply the ruling nationwide. The Department of Justice answered by exercising what the letter calls enforcement discretion, consistent with a statement from the Attorney General the same day. Enforcement discretion means the Department has decided how it will apply the law, not that the law has been repealed. The NFA is still on the books. The Department has chosen not to require approval or registration for the $0 tax items from anyone.

ATF will keep running the NFA system on a voluntary basis. It will still accept Form 1 applications to make or register these items, Form 3 and Form 4 applications to transfer or register them, and Form 2 reports from manufacturers. I expect some owners will keep filing anyway, and the letter’s fifth limit below explains why that may be the smart move in a lot of states.

The letter lists five things the change does not do.

First, the special occupational tax stays. Anyone engaged in the business of manufacturing, importing, or dealing in NFA firearms, including the $0 tax items, must still pay it. The injunction did not touch it.

Second, machineguns and destructive devices are untouched. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act kept the $200 tax on those, so every NFA provision still applies to them.

Third, the Gun Control Act of 1968 was not enjoined. Under 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(3), the GCA’s definition of “firearm” covers silencers, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and any other weapons. That means prohibited persons still cannot possess them, dealers still run background checks, and all GCA recordkeeping remains in place. A suppressor you buy at a shop still goes through a 4473 and a NICS check. Nothing about this letter changes who may legally own a firearm.

Fourth, the GCA’s own restrictions on transporting and selling short-barreled rifles and shotguns under 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(4) and (b)(4) were not enjoined either. ATF says people transporting short-barreled rifles and shotguns should keep filing Form 20s even if the gun is not in the registry. ATF also says it is working to issue new regulations allowing licensees to transfer short-barreled rifles and shotguns under the GCA, and that in the meantime it will not enforce § 922(b)(4). Note the difference in posture. Transport paperwork is still expected. The dealer transfer provision is simply not being enforced until new rules land.

Fifth, and this is the one that will bite people, nothing here changes state or local law. The letter states that most states have general criminal prohibitions on some or all NFA items, and that those laws often carve out exceptions for items possessed in compliance with, or registered under, federal law. An unregistered suppressor that is now fine with ATF may still be a felony under your state code if your state’s exception is written around federal registration. ATF tells individuals and dealers to consult local law enforcement or get legal advice on whether unregistered NFA items are lawful where they live, and to do the same before transporting one into or through another state. The state-by-state permit information I maintain is a starting point for getting oriented on your state, but on NFA questions specifically, the letter’s advice to get a lawyer involved is the right advice.

The letter adds that it is unclear whether state courts will honor the federal travel safe harbor in 18 U.S.C. § 926A for unregistered NFA items, so ATF says to exercise caution before driving one through a state that prohibits it, even if both ends of the trip are legal. And federal licensees remain barred under 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(2) from transferring any firearm, silencers included, in violation of state or local law.

More from USA Carry:

Read together, the practical picture for an owner in a state that already allows these items is straightforward: you can build or buy a suppressor, SBR, SBS, or AOW without waiting on a Form 1 or Form 4, you still go through the dealer’s background check, and you still cannot be a prohibited person. For an owner in a state with an NFA ban that keys off federal registration, voluntary registration may be the only way to stay inside the exception, and a lawyer should make that call. ATF says a Frequently Asked Questions page on its website will accompany the letter with more detail, and questions go to the Firearms Industry Programs Branch at fipb@atf.gov.

This is an enforcement policy, not a statute, and the underlying case is still being litigated. I will continue tracking the Silencer Shop Foundation case, ATF’s promised short-barreled rifle and shotgun regulations, and the state-level fallout.

Read the original story: ATF Stops Requiring NFA Approval and Registration for Suppressors, SBRs, SBSs and AOWs Nationwide, Effective October 9, 2026

Key Takeaways

• A Rankin County man, John White, used his firearm training to stop a carjacking attempt on Dixie Road without firing a shot.
• The suspect, Ronnie Percy Holmes, approached White and demanded his truck after abandoning a stolen SUV on railroad tracks.
• White, a firearms store owner, drew his handgun and kept the suspect at gunpoint until deputies arrived shortly after.
• Deputies arrested Holmes without incident; he faces charges for attempted carjacking and obstructing a railway.
• Sheriff Bailey praised the quick response of dispatchers and deputies, noting the potential for tragedy in the situation.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

STAR, MS — A Rankin County man who owns a firearms store and training facility drew his handgun on a man who tried to take his truck on Dixie Road Saturday morning, held him at gunpoint until deputies arrived, and never fired a shot, according to a statement from Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey.

The motorist is John White, founder and CEO of Two Gun Tactical in Flowood, who described the encounter in his own words, as reported by WLBT.

The Sheriff’s Office said the morning started with 911 calls around 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, October 3, reporting a red Chevrolet SUV with a Florida plate traveling southbound in the northbound lanes of U.S. Highway 49. Deputies began responding. More callers reported the SUV had turned onto Dixie Road in the Star community, then drove onto the railroad tracks near the Airgas facility and stopped there, blocking the rails.

Dispatchers contacted the railroad and learned a freight train was already headed toward the location. The train stopped roughly 200 yards from the SUV.

After leaving the vehicle on the tracks, the Sheriff’s Office said, the suspect walked to Dixie Road and approached a passing motorist, allegedly trying to enter the vehicle and take it from the driver. That driver was White, on his way to work.

White said he rolled down his window and asked the man if he needed help. The answer came fast.

“He immediately ran to the driver’s side of my door and said, I want your truck,” White told WLBT. “And started violently pulling on the handle. I told him to get back; he reached in and tried to unlock it by pulling the knob.”

A hand inside the door is no longer a conversation about a ride. White’s answer was distance and retention, not volume.

“I pulled my firearm, backed away in the driver’s seat so he couldn’t grab my firearm,” White said. “I told him to get back. Steady slow commands.”

White runs a training company, and the decision point was settled in his head before any of this happened. “Quick demands towards the guy: get back, get back. I already processed in my mind when I’m going to shoot when there’s a threat to me,” he said. “I had not gotten to that point. But when he looked at my gun, I put my hand on the trigger, I’m thankful I did not have to shoot.”

Deputies arrived moments later, after other drivers had also called about the SUV. White said the man tried the back door of the truck when he heard the deputies coming, then walked around to the front of it. White stepped out with his firearm and told him to stop. A deputy moved in and ended up between the two men.

The Sheriff’s Office identified the suspect as Ronnie Percy Holmes, 22, of Florida. He was taken into custody without further incident and transported to the University of Mississippi Medical Center for evaluation before being booked into the Rankin County Jail. He is charged with attempted carjacking and obstructing a railway and was expected to appear before Rankin County Court Judge David Morrow. The Mississippi Office of Homeland Security and the Jackson office of the FBI were notified because of the intentional obstruction of the railway. Those are charges, not convictions, and the case now belongs to prosecutors and the court.

More from USA Carry:

• Son Engages w/ Six Armed Robbers Outside Father’s Home; Sends 3 to the Hospital
• Mississippi Concealed Carry Permit Information
• Concealed Carrier Shot After Hit-and-Run Incident Turns Into Shootout
• Man Shoots in Self-Defense Inside Grocery Store
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“This incident could have ended in tragedy,” Bailey said in the statement. “I am extremely proud of our dispatchers who immediately recognized the danger and took action to get the approaching train stopped. I am equally proud of our deputies for their quick response, and I am thankful for the citizen who was prepared to protect himself and safely held the suspect until our deputies arrived.”

White was carrying his own permitted handgun and said he does not leave the house without it. “I train all my students there’s two things that will get you killed,” he said. “One, that it will never happen to me and two, I’m in a safe place. Again, just a normal day of me going to work in a huge truck wrapped in Two Gun Tactical, but he came after me.”

Read the original story: ‘I’m Thankful I Did Not Have to Shoot’: Mississippi Firearm Trainer Describes Holding a Carjacking Suspect at Gunpoint

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

SHREVEPORT, LA — Two 22-year-old men are charged with attempted second-degree murder after Shreveport police say they followed a man who was making Uber deliveries, chased him onto a dead-end road, and opened fire on his vehicle. The driver fired back. More than 60 rounds were fired in all.

Officers responded on Oct. 3 to reports of gunfire near Youree Drive and East Dalzell, as reported by KSLA. They recovered evidence at that location and identified multiple crime scenes connected to the same incident.

During the investigation, officers stopped a vehicle seen leaving the area at a high rate of speed with no headlights on. Inside, they found Cadarius Bumcon with three gunshot wounds.

Investigators determined that Bumcon and Deangelo Robinson had allegedly been following the man while he worked his delivery route, police said. The driver tried to get away. He ran out of road. Police say that when he reached the dead end, Bumcon and Robinson began firing at his vehicle. The driver returned fire as the encounter continued.

He tried to leave first. The street he turned onto gave him nowhere to go and no way to put distance between himself and the car behind him. By the time police say the shooting started, driving away was no longer an option.

Officers and detectives processed the scenes and recovered shell casings, a ski mask, and gloves along with other evidence, according to police.

Robinson admitted to his involvement after being advised of his rights, police said. Bumcon declined to give a statement. Both men were charged with attempted second-degree murder. Police said a booking photo for Bumcon was not available.

More from USA Carry:

• Man Shot After Climbing Into 2nd-Floor Apartment Bedroom in Midnight Break-In
• He Kicked In the Door Looking for Her New Boyfriend. Unfortunately for Him, the New Boyfriend was Armed
• Homeowner Fatally Shoots Juvenile During Alleged Vehicle Break-In in Shreveport
• Watch as Uber Driver w/ CCW Fires at Armed Robbers; Hitting 2
• Deadly Road Rage Incident on Las Vegas Strip: Uber Driver Fatally Shot During Heated Confrontation

Those charges are allegations. Both men are presumed innocent unless convicted, and prosecutors will make the final call on how the case proceeds. The only charges police announced in this incident were filed against Bumcon and Robinson.

If you deliver for a living, you are working a job that puts a stranger’s address, a parked car, and a dark street into your night over and over again. Watch what is behind you between stops. If the same headlights keep turning when you turn, call 911 while you are still moving, stay on well-lit main roads, and do not let an unfamiliar street decide where your night ends. Route awareness is mindset, not gear, and it is the part of this that was available to the driver long before anything else was.

Read the original story: Shreveport Uber Delivery Driver Trailed to a Dead-End Road Fires Back at Two Men, More Than 60 Rounds Exchanged

Key Takeaways

• Masked suspects used a white Toyota Tacoma to ram into Medina Jewelers in Lynnwood during a robbery attempt on October 6.
• The store owner fired at the suspects, causing them to flee without taking anything, according to Lynnwood Police.
• Surveillance footage showed three vehicles circling before the robbery, with one suspect holding an axe.
• The getaway vehicles included a black BMW SUV and a silver sedan, both lacking license plates; the BMW reportedly hit a parked car as they escaped.
• Lynnwood PD is investigating the incident and asks for tips from anyone with information on the suspects or vehicles.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

LYNNWOOD, WA — Masked suspects used a white Toyota Tacoma to ram the front entrance of a jewelry store in the 6500 block of 196th Street Southwest at 12:26 p.m. Tuesday, October 6, and someone inside answered with gunfire, according to the Lynnwood Police Department.

Lynnwood PD said multiple masked suspects attempted to rob the business and that an employee fired a gun at them, causing them to flee. Surveillance video shows three vehicles circling the parking lot before the truck came through the glass, and a group of masked suspects jumping out and running inside through the gap, one of them holding what looked like an axe, as reported by FOX 13 Seattle, which identified the business as Medina Jewelers and the man who fired as the store owner.

The truck came through the front of the building. Glass flew to the back wall. Employees ran. The masked group came in behind the truck.

The owner grabbed his gun and fired. The group turned and ran back out through the hole without taking anything. The video shows the man who had been driving the truck climbing out and following them, hunched over, while the owner kept the gun pointed at him and the suspects waited on a getaway car.

This happened at lunchtime on a commercial street with people on the sidewalk. Commander Joe Dickinson said several pedestrians were out and about when a vehicle crashed into a building and shots rang out. That is the hardest version of this problem for anyone who carries at work: you do not get to choose the hour, the backdrop, or how many people are standing behind the threat. Knowing what is past your target is not a range formality. At 12:26 in the afternoon on 196th, it is the whole calculation.

Police said the suspects fled in two additional vehicles, a black BMW SUV and a silver Toyota or Infiniti sedan. The BMW struck a parked vehicle on the way out and may have visible damage to the front passenger side. Neither getaway vehicle had license plates.

More from USA Carry:

• Elderly Houston Homeowner Shoots Stranger Who Broke Down His Front Door in 1 P.M. Home Invasion After Repeated Orders to Leave
• Residents Disarm and Wound Intruders During Charleston Home Invasion Attempt
• Flying with Guns: Episode 36 – Southwest from Las Vegas to Atlanta
• Caught on Camera: CA Jewelry Store Owner Fires 1 Shot; 3 Armed Robbers Flee
• Flying with Guns: Episode 64 – American Airlines from Cleveland to New Orleans (via Charlotte)

No injuries were reported at the scene, and Lynnwood PD said it is unknown whether any of the suspects were hit. Dickinson said investigators were still working to determine whether the suspects were armed, and called the daylight timing a rare occurrence for the city.

No arrests have been announced. Detectives are actively investigating and are asking anyone who recognizes the suspects or the vehicles in the surveillance video, or who has information about the incident, to email crimetips@lynnwoodwa.gov and reference LPD Case #2026-37986.

Read the original story: Lynnwood Jewelry Store Owner Opens Fire After Masked Crew Rams a Pickup Truck Through His Storefront at Midday

Key Takeaways

• The Second Amendment Foundation reached a settlement with the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office regarding carry restrictions on handguns.
• The county will remove prohibitions on red-dot sights, weapon-mounted lights, and certain pistols from concealed carry permits.
• SAF Director Kostas Moros emphasized that the Sheriff does not have the authority to create a limited list of approved firearms.
• Applicants must still meet range qualification requirements, though restrictions on popular modern carry accessories have been lifted.
• SAF continues to pursue several lawsuits in California, but this settlement provides immediate relief for license holders in Contra Costa County.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CA — The Second Amendment Foundation announced on Oct. 8, 2026, that it has reached a settlement agreement with the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office in SAF v. Contra Costa County, a lawsuit over policies that barred county CCW licensees from carrying handguns equipped with red-dot sights or weapon-mounted lights and banned the carry of single-action 1911- and 2011-style pistols outright.

According to SAF, the Sheriff’s Office will withdraw all three prohibitions for handguns carried under a county license and will update its concealed carry website within 10 days to reflect the change. SAF was joined in the case by private citizens Andrew Moore and James Treuel, who were represented by John W. Dillon of the Dillon Law Group. The settlement agreement itself was not available, and this account rests on SAF’s description of it.

A settlement means the county agreed to change the policy rather than fight to a ruling, so no judge decided whether the bans were constitutional. The practical result for licensees is the same either way: the restrictions go away. What those restrictions did in practice was take three of the most common features on a modern carry gun and turn them into grounds for a permit problem. California already runs one of the most involved permit processes in the country, and my California concealed carry guide walks through what the state requires. Contra Costa layered its own equipment list on top of that.

“A sheriff does not get to invent a shorter list of approved handguns and accessories than the Constitution allows,” said Kostas Moros, SAF Director of Legal Research and Education and attorney of record in the case. “Even though red-dot sights, weapon lights and 1911 and 2011 pistols are in common use for lawful self-defense, Contra Costa treated them as contraband. This settlement ends that unlawful practice, and we are pleased the County saw the error if its ways and resolved these issues.”

The settlement does not wipe out the qualification process. Per SAF, applicants remain subject to the usual range-qualification requirements for any firearm they intend to list on a license, existing licensees who add a red-dot sight or weapon-mounted light to a listed firearm may be required to present the gun for inspection and qualify with the added accessory, and listed firearms must otherwise comply with applicable law. I have no problem with that part. A dot or a light bolted onto a pistol you have not trained with is not an upgrade, it is a new variable. Carry mindset means putting reps behind every change to the gun before it goes in the holster, whether a sheriff requires it or not.

More from USA Carry:

• SAF Sues the Only County in America That Bans Red Dots, Lights and 1911s for Permit Holders
• 120 Days, Not Years: SAF Settles Its LASD Lawsuit After the Department Says It Now Meets California’s Concealed Carry Deadline
• SAF Files for Preliminary Injunction Against Illinois Carry Ban
• Concealed Carrier Shoots Suspect Who Tried to Run Him Down Using His Own Stolen Vehicle
• SAF, NRA File Brief Challenging Pennsylvania Ban on 18-20 Year Old Carry

“Thankfully this case didn’t require the usual song and dance and provides a practical win for people who already have, or are seeking, a Contra Costa carry license,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “Those citizens are now able to carry a reliable pistol with the sights and lights that make it safer to use without fear of prosecution.”

Kraut also noted that SAF has more than a dozen lawsuits pending in California alone. This one is narrow by comparison. It touches one county and one list of equipment, and it ended without a court opinion anyone can cite elsewhere. But it is the kind of win a permit holder actually feels. The pistol a Contra Costa licensee trained on, with the optic and light already on it, is now the pistol that goes on the license. That is the whole point of a carry permit, and for a while in this county it was not the case.

Read the original story: Contra Costa Sheriff Banned Red Dots, Weapon Lights, and 1911s From Concealed Carry. SAF Settlement Forces the County to Drop All Three

Key Takeaways

• Springfield Armory launched the 4” Polished Blued SA-35, a 9mm pistol designed for EDC with a polished finish.
• The SA-35 features a 4-inch barrel, improved ergonomics, and a factory-tuned trigger, priced at $799.
• This model incorporates a polished blued finish and walnut grips, enhancing its aesthetic appeal.
• Springfield emphasizes the blend of classic design and modern enhancements for today’s shooters.
• A review awaits after testing the pistol, focusing on performance and reliability in addition to its looks.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Springfield Armory announced the launch of the 4” Polished Blued SA-35 on October 6, a 9mm pistol that pairs a compact 4-inch-barreled slide assembly with a polished blued finish on a forged carbon steel frame and slide. The company is positioning it as a refined EDC option in the SA-35 line.

According to Springfield Armory’s announcement, the new model carries SKU HP9205 and an MSRP of $799. It is made in the U.S.A.

The SA-35 is Springfield’s modern take on John Moses Browning’s original P-35 design. The company describes the upgrades as subtle but significant: rugged forged steel parts, improved ergonomics and enhanced controls, a factory-tuned trigger, a Tactical Rack rear sight paired with a white dot front sight, an improved feed ramp, and a 15-round flush-fit magazine. The feed ramp design is meant to run reliably with modern defensive ammunition, which matters more than the finish if you plan to carry it.

What sets this version apart is the look. The polished blued finish gives the carbon steel frame and slide a deep, lustrous appearance, and walnut grip panels with natural grain and finely cut checkering round out the “wood and steel” character the company is leaning into.

“The SA-35’s combination of classic styling with enhancements today’s shooters demand made it an immediate hit,” said Steve Kramer, Vice President of Marketing for Springfield Armory. “This new version, combining a polished finish with lighter weight and a more compact size, makes for a very appealing option for EDC users.”

More from USA Carry:

• Springfield’s SA-35 Hi-Power: Classic Design with Modern Upgrades
• Cincinnati Man Shot and Killed After Assault, Police Call It Justifiable Homicide
• 3 Easy Ways To Tune Your Trigger
• Walther PPQ M2 4-Inch 9mm for Concealed Carry
• The Dry Practice Starter Kit

I have one of these in hand for review. I have not shot it yet, so I am not going to tell you how it runs until I have put rounds through it. I can tell you it is a beautiful gun. The first thing my son said when I showed it to him was to ask if he could have it. No, son. This one is mine.

A polished finish and walnut grips do not stop a threat. Mindset and training do. But there is nothing wrong with carrying a gun you actually enjoy looking at, as long as you train with it the same way you would train with a plastic one. I will have a full range report once I have run it.

Read the original story: Springfield Armory Launches 4-Inch Polished Blued SA-35, a Forged-Steel 9mm With Walnut Grips and 15 Rounds at $799

Key Takeaways

• Nick Giordano started a petition due to long delays in processing pistol permit applications in Westchester County.
• Applicants now wait over a year just to submit paperwork, as illustrated by Giordano’s own experience and that of others.
• The petition calls for legal action against the county for these delays and seeks better staffing and scheduling in the licensing division.
• Costs associated with obtaining a pistol license can reach over $650, despite the lengthy wait times for approval.
• Giordano gathers timelines from applicants across New York to highlight the widespread nature of the problem.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

EASTCHESTER, NY — A Westchester County man who waited nearly a year to get his own pistol license has started a petition demanding the county fix a backlog he says now runs more than a year before a new applicant can even hand in the paperwork.

Nick Giordano, who owns a small design business in Eastchester, posted the petition on Change.org. It calls on the Firearms Policy Coalition, Gun Owners of America, and the Second Amendment Foundation to sue Westchester County over the delays, and it names the seven Westchester County Court judges who sign off on licenses as the decision makers. When he emailed me, it had 69 verified signatures after a week.

Giordano walked me through his own dates. He took his 18-hour course on October 17 and 18, 2023, and called the licensing division first thing the next morning. The appointment he was given was in early May 2024. That was seven months of waiting just to submit the application and get fingerprinted. His interview with the judge came on August 9, 2024. He was approved, and he picked up the license two to three weeks later. Roughly ten months, start to finish, with no explanation. He says he asked the receptionist why the first appointment was so far out and never got a real answer, and nothing about the delay ever came in writing.

In New York, that wait is not just a wait to carry. You need a license to possess a handgun at all, and the state issues only two kinds, full carry and premises. The full breakdown is in my guide to New York concealed carry laws and permits. Until that license is in hand, a Westchester resident who has already paid for and passed state-mandated training cannot legally own a pistol for his own home.

Then the wait got worse. Giordano told me his best friend took the course the last weekend in August and called the next morning, exactly as Giordano had coached him. The submission date the county gave him was August 10, 2027. Nearly a year to turn in a form. That number is what pushed Giordano to start the petition.

A family member’s timeline, which Giordano shared with me, shows the other side of the same problem. That applicant finished the class in early May 2025, called two days later, and was given an appointment of April 10, 2026. He then called the division at least three times a week, took a cancellation slot, and ended up submitting on August 12, interviewing with a judge on October 3, and picking up his license on October 10. Total: 162 days. His father took the same class, got the same original date, called every other week instead, and did not get his license until the following May. Same county, same paperwork, same qualifications. The only variable was how often each man pestered the office for a cancellation.

Getting the license is not the last line either. Giordano says adding a handgun to it, an amendment the county has to approve, takes another two to three months. His current dealer, Ulster Firearms, allocates the gun in his name and does not ask for payment until the amendment clears. He says most shops do not work that way, and when he bought his first Glock 19, before he found that dealer, he paid roughly $500 to $600 up front for a pistol that then sat at the store.

The cost to get this far, by his accounting: $650 for the 18-hour course at Gold Shield Training, an application fee of about $125, and a few hours off work spread across submission, fingerprints, the court interview, and pickup. The county collects that application money at the front of a line it then takes a year to move.

He did not come to this because of a single scare. He told me he runs late nights at his shop, the neighborhood can get sketchy, and he wanted to know he could protect himself if a situation ever came to that. He put in 18 hours of training before he ever dialed the number. That is the mindset the licensing system claims to want, and it is the applicant the system makes wait longest.

More from USA Carry:

• Delaware Concealed Carry Permit Information
• FPC Just Asked the Supreme Court to End Maryland’s Carry Bans, and the List of Banned Places Is Staggering
• FPC and SAF Ask Supreme Court to Strike Down New York City’s Stun Gun Ban, Call Second Circuit Ruling “Caetano 2.0”
• One Permit or Fifty? Minnesota Gun Owner Asks Supreme Court Whether Americans Need a License From Every State to Carry
• A Stalking Victim Passed Her Background Check, Paid for the Gun, and Went Home Unarmed. Maine’s 72-Hour Wait Is Now at the Supreme Court.

Giordano says he sent the petition to FPC, GOA, and SAF after launching it. He has heard back from a contact at FPC, SAF replied that it would pass the petition to its legal team, and GOA has not responded. What he wants, in his words: more staff, online scheduling, a defined wait time, any of it. “A year to just turn in your application is insanity,” he told me. “If they don’t have enough people running the division then they need to hire more.”

The petition is open to anyone, not just Westchester residents, and Giordano is also collecting permit timelines from other New York counties in a thread on r/NYguns. If your county’s process looks like this one, he wants the dates.

Read the original story: Westchester Man Who Waited Nearly a Year for His Pistol Permit Starts Petition as County Hands New Applicants Appointment Dates in 2027

Key Takeaways

• The Supreme Court declined to hear the case United States v. Hembree, upholding a Fifth Circuit ruling on the unconstitutionality of the felon-in-possession statute for a man convicted of simple drug possession.
• The Fifth Circuit found that the government failed to justify a permanent gun ban based on Charles Hembree’s felony for meth possession, emphasizing the burden of proof lies with the government.
• Hembree’s case highlights the distinction between state and federal rules on firearm possession, as federal laws can override state permits.
• The court’s decision continues to impact how similar cases are treated within the Fifth Circuit, requiring historical justification for gun bans related to drug offenses.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

WASHINGTON, DC — The Supreme Court on Monday, October 5, 2026, declined to hear United States v. Hembree, leaving in place a Fifth Circuit decision that the federal felon-in-possession statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), is unconstitutional as applied to a Mississippi man whose only felony was simple possession of methamphetamine.

In February I covered Federal Appeals Court Tosses Felon Gun Ban Based on Meth Possession, when the Fifth Circuit handed down the ruling. What has changed since then is that the Justice Department petitioned the Supreme Court to review it, as reported by Townhall, and the Court said no, so the appeals court decision stands. “As applied” is the phrase that matters. The Fifth Circuit did not strike § 922(g)(1) off the books. It held that the government could not justify using the statute against this particular man with this particular record.

According to the Fifth Circuit’s January 27, 2026 opinion, Charles Hembree was convicted in 2018 in Mississippi state court of possession of methamphetamine. In 2022 a federal indictment charged him under § 922(g)(1) with possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. His lawyers moved to dismiss, arguing the statute violated the Second Amendment as applied to him in light of Bruen. The district court denied the motion on December 1, 2023. Hembree then pleaded guilty under a plea agreement that waived nearly every appeal right but reserved the Bruen question. The district court sentenced him below the guidelines range to six months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. Six months in federal custody, with a nonviolent possession conviction as the only reason he was barred from having a gun. That is the case the Fifth Circuit took up.

A panel of Judges Higginson, Willett, and Engelhardt reversed the conviction, with Judge Stephen Higginson writing and Judge Don Willett concurring separately. Because Hembree preserved his challenge in the motion to dismiss, the court reviewed it de novo, meaning it decided the constitutional question fresh instead of deferring to the district judge. The opinion lays out his argument in one sentence: the government “has not and cannot prove that disarming Hembree based on his conviction for possession of methamphetamine fits within this country’s traditional regulation of firearms.” Relying on its 2024 decision in United States v. Diaz, which the Supreme Court also declined to review, the panel agreed. In the line Townhall quoted from the opinion, “the government did not meet its burden to prove that history and tradition support simple possession as a valid felony predicate.” The predicate is the prior conviction that triggers the ban in the first place, and the court found the government could not tie this one to any historical tradition of disarmament. As I noted in February, the government tried to liken Hembree’s offense to mail theft and counterfeiting, crimes punished severely in the 18th century, and the panel rejected the comparison because those crimes involved fraud and theft, not personal drug use.

Under Bruen the burden sits on the government, not the citizen. The Fifth Circuit did not ask whether Hembree was a sympathetic defendant. It asked whether the government could produce history justifying a permanent gun ban for simple drug possession, and the government could not. Hembree also raised a facial challenge, a vagueness claim, and a Commerce Clause argument for the first time on appeal, but the preserved as-applied challenge is the one that carried the reversal.

The denial lands four months after Hemani. In June, per Townhall, the Court held that the federal law barring habitual drug users from having guns violated the Second Amendment as applied to a Texas man who said he uses marijuana a few times a week. Justice Neil Gorsuch stressed that “[i]n many respects, this case is a narrow one,” and he noted the Court was not addressing the law “disarming individuals convicted of felonies (often including drug-related ones).” Hembree was the Court’s first clean opportunity to address exactly that, and it passed.

A denial is not a ruling. The justices did not say the Fifth Circuit got it right; they said they would not look. Other circuits remain free to go the other way, and the question of who § 922(g)(1) can constitutionally reach stays unsettled nationally. Inside the Fifth Circuit, which covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, prosecutors now have to come to court with history, not just the statute, before convicting someone whose only felony is simple possession.

More from USA Carry:

• Federal Appeals Court Tosses Felon Gun Ban Based on Meth Possession
• Armed Wife Saves Husband During Attempted Robbery
• No Right To Concealed Carry, Says California Appeals Court
• Burglar Killed in Self-Defense; Accomplice Charged With His Murder
• Houston Resident Shoots Man Who Shoved Him at His Own Apartment Door, DA Declines Charges

There is a practical layer here for anyone who carries. The federal ban sits on top of state permit rules, and the two do not always line up. My state-by-state concealed carry permit information covers the state side, but a prior conviction can end your right to possess a firearm at the federal level no matter what your state permit says. Hembree served his six months before an appeals court said the conviction never should have happened. Knowing your own legal status is part of the mindset, and this case shows the line is still being drawn in court.

I will continue tracking how courts apply Hembree and when the Supreme Court finally takes up the felon-in-possession question it set aside in Hemani.

Read the original story: DOJ Asked the Supreme Court to Restore a Felon-in-Possession Conviction Built on Simple Drug Possession. The Justices Said No.

Key Takeaways

• A resident shot a stranger, Hunter A. Jarvis, who entered their home uninvited at 4:39 a.m. in South Glens Falls, NY.
• Jarvis faces a misdemeanor charge of criminal trespass but remains in stable condition after surgery for a gunshot wound.
• State Police indicated that the resident likely will not face charges due to New York’s laws on self-defense within one’s home.
• The case raises questions about Jarvis’s conduct and the circumstances leading to the shooting, but only the trespass charge currently applies.
• A court date is set for Jarvis on Oct. 14, and he is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

SOUTH GLENS FALLS, NY — A resident of a Main Street home shot a 20-year-old stranger who walked through the door at 4:39 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 6, and State Police say there is no indication the resident will be charged.

Hunter A. Jarvis of Hudson Falls was still at Albany Medical Center on Tuesday evening when State Police announced he had been charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass, as reported by the Times Union. He was taken there with a non-life-threatening gunshot wound to the leg and was in stable condition following surgery Wednesday morning, according to State Police spokeswoman Trooper Stephanie O’Neil.

Four people were inside the home at 46 Main St. None of them knew Jarvis. He came in through the door without permission or invitation, O’Neil said. One of the residents shot him. No one else was hurt.

“As of right now there’s no indication the individual will be charged,” O’Neil said of the resident. The investigation remains open, including the question of why Jarvis entered the home in the first place.

State Police have not described what happened between the moment Jarvis came through the door and the moment the resident fired. That gap matters, and I am not going to fill it. What the record shows so far is a stranger inside an occupied home before dawn and a resident who stopped him with one wound to the leg.

The charge against Jarvis is worth understanding. O’Neil said he is not facing burglary, at least for now, because he did not force his way in. That is a question about Jarvis’s conduct and the condition of the door. It is a separate question from what the resident reasonably believed at 4:39 a.m. when an unknown man appeared inside the house with three other people present. The charging decision for the intruder and the legal position of the person who shot him are two different analyses, and police have been clear that the second one is leaning toward no charges.

New York does not have a stand your ground law. Outside your home, you have a duty to retreat before using deadly force if you can do so safely. Inside your own home, that duty disappears as long as you were not the initial aggressor, and the law also recognizes a reasonable belief that someone is breaking in to commit a crime. That home exception is the whole reason this resident is not sitting in a cell today.

More from USA Carry:

• Houston Homeowner Shoots and Kills Masked, Gloved Intruder Found Inside His Home Before Dawn
• Charlotte Homeowner Opens Fire On Intruder Who Forced Way Inside Before Dawn
• Mall Robbery Turns Violent as Suspects Try to Disarm Victim – One Ends Up Shot, All Three Arrested
• Motorcyclist Fatally Shoots Man Charging with Hammer in Maryland Road Rage Confrontation
• Armed Trespasser Refuses to Leave; Is Shot and Killed by Homeowner

The lesson I take from this one is about mindset more than hardware. The firearm was already in the house. What the resident had to supply was the decision that a stranger standing inside the home before dawn is a threat to the people in it, not a situation to wait out. That decision has to be made ahead of time, because at 4:39 a.m. there is no time to make it.

Jarvis was issued a ticket to appear in Moreau Town Court on Oct. 14. The criminal trespass charge is an allegation, and he is presumed innocent unless convicted. The resident has not been identified, State Police have not said what kind of firearm was used, and no formal charging decision regarding the resident has been announced.

Read the original story: Hudson Falls Man Walks Into Wrong South Glens Falls Home Before Dawn, Gets Shot in the Leg and Charged With Criminal Trespass

Key Takeaways

• A Toledo woman defended her family with a shotgun against two brothers during a fight on October 6.
• Police arrested Dazeon and Juawan Hersey after forcing entry into the home where the woman held them at bay.
• Dazeon faces multiple charges including domestic violence and resisting arrest, while Juawan is charged with domestic violence and using weapons while intoxicated.
• The woman neutralized the threat without firing, illustrating the goal of defensive gun use: stopping the threat rather than shooting.
• This incident highlights the importance of training for armed citizens to handle threats effectively and safely.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

TOLEDO, OH — A Toledo woman armed with a shotgun held two brothers at bay inside a home on Pinewood in the early morning hours of Tuesday, October 6, after a fight with her family. Officers arrived to find her still holding them. Both men left in handcuffs.

Police responded to the home and found the woman holding the shotgun, defending her family from the men, as reported by WTVG. Units forced entry and placed the brothers under arrest.

Police identified them as Dazeon Hersey, 19, and Juawan Hersey, 21. Juawan was living at the home with his girlfriend at the time, and the fight was with her family. Dazeon faces charges of domestic violence, assault, obstruction, and resisting arrest. Juawan is charged with domestic violence, assault, and using weapons while intoxicated.

That last charge matters. Police say a man who was drunk and armed was fighting with the family he was living with. Whatever the weapon was, the woman who picked up the shotgun was not facing two empty-handed men. She was facing two attackers, at least one of whom had a weapon and had been drinking, inside her own home.

Two on one is a disparity of numbers that armed citizens are trained to take seriously. Add intoxication and a weapon and the picture gets worse. She did not have to find out how far it would go. The shotgun came out, the fight stopped, and the men were still there when officers forced their way in.

More from USA Carry:

• Would-Be Burglar Met with Gunfire by Female Resident
• Rittenhouse “Was” Guilty
• Brother Fatally Shoots Sibling in Self-Defense During Family Dispute in Houston
• Woman Charged with Brother’s Murder After He Tries to Rob The Date She Set Up But Gets Shot Instead
• Boy Fatally Shoots Younger Brother w/ AR-15 Left on Floor; Father Charged w/ Murder

This is what many defensive gun uses look like. The firearm appears, the attack ends, and nobody pulls the trigger. These cases rarely make headlines because there is no body and no dramatic video, but they are the outcome every armed citizen should be training for.

The mindset lesson is the same one I keep coming back to. The goal is never to shoot someone. The goal is to stop the threat, and the best possible outcome is the one where the threat stops before you have to. She held the line and let police do the arresting.

Read the original story: Toledo Woman Holds Two Brothers at Shotgun Point After Early-Morning Fight With Her Family, Both Men Arrested on Domestic Violence and Assault Charges

I’ve already been shooting the optic-cut slide. I’m a paid Field-Testing Advisor on Lodestar’s Independent Advisory Board, and I’ve been testing these guns for months. Ever since I got one, I’ve been asking for an optic-cut slide. I was about to have mine milled when Lodestar shipped me their first one.

It’s a direct mount with the Holosun K footprint, so there’s no adapter plate. I put a Holosun 507K X2-GR on it. Buy the optic-ready version from Lodestar and it comes with a Holosun EPS, which is an enclosed optic.

So far I have 617 rounds through the optic-cut slide. I’m tracking them in Armorer, the firearm maintenance app I built. I haven’t had any issues with the mounting system. The screws haven’t backed out and everything has stayed put.

I like it better than the iron-sight version, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. I’m thinking about running it in a USPSA match soon since I’m getting back into competing.

If you haven’t seen the LNK9 before, it’s a biometric, user-authorized 9mm. Authorized users unlock it with a fingerprint or a PIN code, and the owner manages who has access through Lodestar’s phone app. Fingerprint data is stored on the gun, and the core authentication works without the cloud or any outside network.

The LNK9 has a 4.02-inch barrel, a polymer frame, a compact slide on a full-size frame, 17-round or 10-round magazines, a Picatinny rail, a reversible magazine release, status lights and inductive charging. “For us, innovation has to serve a practical purpose,” Lodestar CEO Shawn Campbell said in the announcement. Lodestar says it handles development, manufacturing and testing at its Chattanooga headquarters.

The optics-ready models are available through FFL dealers, distributors and Lodestar’s website. For reference, Lodestar announced the standard LNK9 in March at an MSRP of $979.99.

Read the original story: Lodestar’s LNK9 Is Now Optics Ready. I’ve Put 617 Rounds Through the First Optic-Cut Slide