Alex Ooley (01:46)
Welcome back everyone to the Forge of Freedom podcast for our last segment from the NRA annual meeting. We're here in the voices of the second amendment section of the convention floor. And I'm here with our final guest, Stephen Holbrook. Stephen, welcome back to the Forge of Freedom. Thank you. There's a lot of voices going on around here. So yeah, I hope everybody can hear this. Okay. That's right. Yeah. I've been testing the audio over the last few days and it seems like it's been coming through.

All right, so I will I want to remind everybody we have been live streaming the last three days But each segment will be coming out as an individual segment at my podcast and on YouTube rumble and Facebook After the show sometime later next week including this segment with mr. Hallbrook. So ⁓ For those who don't know mr. Hallbrook. We have recorded a podcast previously about his book America's rifle the case for the AR-15 ⁓

which was episode 46 of the Forge of Freedom. So if you have an interest in that book, it's a great defense of a lot of the, let's say assault on the AR-15 and its characterization as an assault rifle. ⁓ And Stephen provides a great deal of citations for his work and the claims that he makes in it. And I think it's a great resource for people who want to be more well-equipped.

and educated about the AR-15 and America's rifle. And why it's constitutionally protected. And why it's cautioned. Exactly. it's just a rifle. Hello. There's no assault to it. Right. Unless somebody assaults somebody. That you can do with a broom or a mop. Right. Exactly. So ⁓ certainly I highly recommend that book. And if you're interested in the podcast as well, episode 46 of the Forge of Freedom. So with that being said.

If you would tell us a little bit about yourself. You've got extensive history and working to protect the Second Amendment. You've also written a number of books, one which we've alluded to. If you would just tell us, the viewers, a little bit about who you are and ⁓ then we'll get into the meat of the topic for today about the current posture of Second Amendment litig, ⁓ cases that are pending in federal courts nationwide. I became interested in the Second Amendment basically as

a teenager I would think you would say because I was in summer camp and we had the junior NRA rifle program and you you get the medals and everything you go from marksman marksman first-class sharpshooter and all that and we used single shot bolt action 22s and by the time I got in the college this was in the second half of the 60s the stuff hit the fan in terms of

all the gun control proposals and so I became an NRA member, ⁓ adult member at that point and they had a lot of legislative updates and what was going on and if you turn the clock back, the gun control act was pretty radical what passed but at the time a lot worse was being proposed. universal registration of all handguns, know what constitutional power does the federal government have to do that?

But every registration bill was defeated. And not only then, but later when we turned the clock up to 1986, the Firearms Owners Protection Act, there's a provision prohibiting registration. And then when the Brady Act passed, there's another prohibition on registration, like the attorney general does the background checks and it's prohibited to keep a database of gun owners.

There's been a lot of progress. worked on a number of cases. A little bit more background. I got a PhD in philosophy at Florida State University and then my JD law degree from Georgetown in Washington, DC. But I've been working since before I was in law school, even on second amendment issues. so back in about 77, we had a meeting of people who were interested in doing scholarship.

It kind of started there with people working together. I'm talking about constitutional law scholars and practicing attorneys. so by the time the 90s came around, I was lucky to get to argue three cases in the Supreme Court, Thompson Center Arms versus US. We won that one. It's an NFA issue. And then Prince versus US where

⁓ Congress tried to conscript local law enforcement to do its bidding when they're not the bosses and they don't pay them. And so the court held that unconstitutional, wonderful decision written by Justice Scalia. And then the Waco tragedy, the criminal case that came out of that, I did that case and we won that one. ⁓ We won that one nine to zero. So that was pretty good. And you argued each of those at the Supreme Court, right?

And I remember actually reading prints in law school. didn't even know who you were at the time. But I remember thinking that was such an important case because I'm not sure if that's the case. Did it create the anti-commandeering or affirm the anti-commandeering? It affirmed that there was a case a couple of years before that in New York versus US on a different issue. And know, the court clearly said you can't do that. So what did they do? They do it anyway. Right.

Like that's never stopped them from doing anything bad, has it? So we got an even better decision and extension of that remark, that holding ⁓ that the states and localities don't work for the feds. They can't just give them dictates. Which is incredibly important, especially when the federal government is trying to enforce gun control legislation, right? Because the federal government would have a hard time enforcing some of these broad, wide range.

wide-reaching ⁓ gun control measures without the assistance of local state and local law enforcement. So that's a, I think a very important protection that's built in and now affirmed through those two cases that you mentioned. Yeah, then when the Hiller case came around, DC's handgun ban, ⁓ another 5-4 decision written by Scalia, what a wonderful justice he was. ⁓

I was privileged to represent a majority of members of Congress. All the Republicans virtually, probably all of them, and a lot of Democrats signed on to our Meekest brief. And they couldn't get it together to pass a law that prohibited the District of Columbia from banning handguns, but they were willing to sign on to the brief and say, is unconstitutional. And so we had a great decision there. And then finally, the Bruin case comes along.

So for several years before Bruin, ⁓ we had been anticipating the Supreme Court would address the right to carry a gun. You know, it says right to bear arms, not just keep them, like New York and California and Jersey, they don't understand what that means. And so ⁓ I wrote a book called The Right to Bear Arms, ⁓ a Privilege of the Ruling Class or a Constitutional Right of the People in anticipation of that case. ⁓

very timely, the court granted cert right when the book came out. And so there we have it. Now we got the Bruin case and there's massive resistance to that as usual. Sure. Yeah. And I want to get into that a little bit because since Bruin, ⁓ which didn't really create a new test, a lot of people have talked about the Bruin case as having created a new test about how we review second amendment related challenges. It really

clarified and affirmed the test that was identified in Heller, right? Which was we review ⁓ Second Amendment related challenges based on the text history and tradition. It's not subject to some interest balancing where we have to balance the interest of the government against the individual's interest in the particular right. Exactly. So when Heller came down, the District of Columbia had a ban on so-called assault weapons and magazines and a lot of other restrictions.

And so Heller said that if a type of ⁓ arm is in common use by law-abiding people for lawful purposes, it's protected. So we thought this would be a slam dunk case. We brought a case called, came to be known as Heller II. This is really going to be easy. But then so you get the DC Circuit making up this new rule, the balancing test. ⁓ the court admitted that these AR-15s, for example, are in common use.

just statistically and we had a very conservative figure for that even and they said that but then but hold on we're going to balance the right away because we're going to apply they called it intermediate scrutiny it wasn't much of any scrutiny at all and upheld it based on well there's this balance and then but we had a dissenting opinion in this heller two case and it was a guy named Kavanaugh

And I mean, nobody had heard of him very much other than if you were really plugged into the DC circuit. He wrote an excellent dissent where he articulated even better in some ways than Heller had done the text, history, and tradition methodology for interpreting constitutional rights. so, boy, I was eye-lated when he got on the Supreme Court. Yeah, exactly. So after Heller too, in which he wrote the dissenting opinion,

He eventually became part of the Supreme Court, right? And then a number of years later we had the Bruin decision ⁓ and in Bruin or in the aftermath of Bruin I should say ⁓ There has been nevertheless a lot of resistance in terms of how that test gets applied, right? What what your history do we look to? When is the test or the methodology even implicated? What is the Second Amendment?

if the first inquiry is right is whether the second amendment is implicated. Right. Right. And then you get to the text history and tradition. So they pretend to apply the text. The first step is the text. And so what do they say? Oh, well, a semi-auto rifle is not an arm. I mean, hello. And neither is a magazine. Yeah. They're components of a magazine is a component of an arm, just like a trigger or, you know, a shoulder stock or anything, any other part.

And they say, it doesn't even reach the textual level. We don't even have to go into the history. But if you want to go into the history, we got news for you. We're not going to go by the history at the founding. We're going to go by the history. They claim at the time the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868. But what they really want to do is go by some selected history from the late 1800s and the early 1900s.

What is it about? Well, they regulated concealed carry of bowie knives, and therefore you can ban AR-15s, for example. I mean, what a stretch. I mean, it's just open defiance, the Supreme Court's rulings. And I think it might be useful here for our listeners to talk through the text history and tradition methodology that was articulated in Bruin. Would you mind to do that? We've alluded to it already with the text, but I want to get into more...

what the text, what it means by the text, and then what's the history and tradition component of that methodology. Right, I mean, you couldn't ask for a better analysis about the text than we got in Heller. Scalia went through each word in the Second Amendment, arms and fringe, keep and bear, and rejecting that it was just a solely militia-related right. So when we get to Bruin, we have an application of that and with more focus on

history and tradition because the textual analysis had already been done. But, Thomas repeated in Bruin, ⁓ if an implement ⁓ promotes or relates to ⁓ the right to have a gun for self-defense, it's protected. And that language was very broad, and so it really helps out on the textual front. But then he went through

turn the clock back to the statute of Northampton, 1326, I think it was. The, the Antis were trying to say that overrides the second amendment because it had to do with riding armed to the terror of the people. But the way that law had been interpreted, this is, you know, medieval English law, the way the courts in England had interpreted it, you had to go armed like with dangerous and unusual weapons and terrorize people.

it didn't relate to the peaceable carrying of arms. the court starts there and says, well, that's not very relevant, that kind of case. And it goes all the way up through the colonies and the founding period, 1791, when the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, was adopted. And basically it said, the closer, if you want to know what kind of law would have been acceptable,

it would be something that would be from around the founding or shortly thereafter, the early antebellum period. So there were two kinds of laws, for example, about carrying. One was that you couldn't carry arms in a way that would terrorize people. Kind of a derivative from some of the older English laws. That would be if I had a machete and I'm swinging it around and scaring everybody or...

know, shooting up in the air with a gun and a bar or whatever, that would be under that kind of law. So that's acceptable. And then another kind of law was that, for example, Virginia and Massachusetts had these laws where if you threaten other people or they think, they can go and get a kind of equivalent to a peace bond today. A surety bond, right? Exactly. And so you would agree, I got to pay all this money if I do something bad.

Unless you could show that what you were really doing was exercising your right to self-defense, then you were exempt from that. those are the kind of laws about caring that were acceptable to the founders. And so the methodology today ⁓ basically says that for the government to support a proposed law that implicates the text of the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms,

What sort of relationship does it have to have to those laws at the time of the founding? Right, and so it has to be something that was kind of predominant, not just some isolated law like the other side picked out this. There were two parts in New Jersey, think. East Jersey had a law that restricted planners from carrying pistols. Maybe just concealed, I forgot. But that's not good enough. ⁓

The surety laws and the riding arm to the tear of the people, those kinds of laws, those were pretty universal. But when you get to 1868, the ratification of the 14th Amendment, the laws really weren't ⁓ much more restrictive. mean, you start to get really, especially after that, some restrictions on juveniles having guns or...

carrying guns or buying guns. Of course you have the laws that were put in place to basically disarm the newly freed slaves as well, right? The Southern Black Code started in 1865 after the war ended. That's why the 14th Amendment was adopted more than any other reason. Congress passed the Freedmen's Bureau Act in 1866 and it explicitly said that the rights to individual liberty and

and personal security, which terms that came from Blackstone, ⁓ that protected the constitutional right to bear arms. And Congress didn't say that about any other right at that time, the same Congress that proposed the 14th Amendment. So at that time, there were some restrictions in some places, not everywhere, on carrying guns concealed. ⁓ the 14th Amendment, well, the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

or that really invalidated these southern black codes. ⁓ In the northern states, by and large, there were no concealed weapon prohibitions. Finally, you get to the Sullivan Law in 1911, New York, where you had to have a license to even keep a gun in your home, ⁓ and especially to carry. And then the way that developed, nobody could get a license unless you were really important, like a privileged person.

a billionaire or a movie star, celebrity, or if you paid the New York City Licensing Division bribes. Cash, prostitutes, Caribbean vacations. So there was a corrupt system and that's what Bruin did away with. the point in discussing these time periods is that part of the text history and tradition methodology is that the proposed gun regulation is supposed to have been

analogous to those ⁓ prohibitions that were in place at the time of the founding in particular, that's what some argue. The antis tend to argue that we can look to later time periods. so it needs to be analogous either to one of these terroristic type laws or the surety bond or I think what you've written about previously as what's called an effray, right? And so how does that analogy ⁓ sort of...

process take place? What sorts of analogies? How close does the analogy have to be? And I think we've got a better sense for that since Rahimi. Right. How do you articulate that analysis? So in Rahimi the issue was whether the federal law would be valid if there's a restraining order issue with a judicial finding that you're a threat to the physical safety of a domestic relation, you know, like a spouse or

live-in girlfriend, you know, or a kid. And so ⁓ in that case, the court said, it's good enough if you have, you know, you look back at the surety laws and these writing arm laws, that's close enough. And another reason why it's to be upheld was that it's only temporary. Once that restraining order is lifted, then you're free to have a gun again. And so the court thought that was good enough. Now, Justice Thomas...

dissented because he didn't think that these cases were sufficiently analogous. So they were not proper analogs is what I'm trying to say. Personally I tend to agree with him because even though it's temporary it is a complete prohibition on the right to arms during that time period unlike the bond because you could post a bond ⁓ and there's no criminal component because it's a civil determination oftentimes

without a hearing, sometimes with a hearing. But nevertheless, it's a civil determination. it's analogous, but like we're talking about, how close does the analogy have to be? And as you said, the Supreme Court was satisfied that... Yeah, you know, it was a close case. And Rahimi was not somebody you would want to be the next door neighbor. Sure. And he had state charges pending, which were more serious than the federal charge. he shot up a convenience or a fast food place.

because they wouldn't accept his friend's credit card. He did all kinds of things. And what got him in trouble with the restraining order was ⁓ he was beating up his girlfriend. And so they didn't even have a hearing. He just accepted it like many people do, right? One problem with this, had another case been before the court, like, ⁓ yeah, I'll agree not to... ⁓

interfere with or harass my spouse that I'm getting a divorce from and mutually we can both sign on to that. Why would we want to do that? And then you're under this restraining order. So that's where it can be really overly broad. But that don't have to be worked out. There's way to get the federal ban, which is if there's a court order without any need for a finding restraining you from doing something bad.

and the court didn't decide that and they explicitly did not decide that. There has to be a court order about the probability of ⁓ domestic violence. And so it's something we can live with, I think. It's a fairly narrow opinion. Exactly. As related to Rahimi, who was unquestionably a bad dude. Yeah. But nevertheless, we did get some insight about how close the analogy, how similar the current proposed ban has to be compared to the

to the bans at the time of the founding. exactly. So anyway, in the wake of, well, most people know who have watched this podcast know that there's been very little Second Amendment litigation until Heller, but there's been even more in the wake of Bruin and Brahimi. Can you tell us a little bit about what's currently circulating around the federal courts, what you're most interested in and what you think has the best chance?

of making its way to the Supreme Court. There are a few in front of the Supreme Court right now, but not some of the ones that most people are interested in. Well, I think the two most important issues because they're outright state bans would be bans on commonly possessed semi-automatic rifles that they like to call assault weapons, and then magazine bans. If it holds more than 10 rounds, then it's prohibited, you know, gets you in prison. So there's...

I think five states had bans before Bruin, and then once Bruin was decided, even more states enacted it. They didn't get the memo. I think Delaware passed a ban, for example, about three days after Bruin was decided. ⁓ And then ⁓ Rhode Island. So anyway, there's two cases pending. The Supreme Court is interested in them because they keep relisting them instead of just denying cert. ⁓ One is this Snoop case.

the Maryland so-called assault weapon ban upheld by the Fourth Circuit and then ⁓ what is it, Island Tactical in Rhode Island? Ocean Tactical. Ocean Tactical, The magazine ban. And the court has rejected most other ⁓ Second Amendment cases. They just rejected the Eighth Circuit, I think it is, Minnesota, the ban on

glad you brought that up, the age requirement. Yeah, there's, whether for federal FFFL sales or for carry permits or whatever, lot of jurisdictions have a requirement, you have to be at least 21. And so the court, lower court, invalidated that. There's another circuit that validated that. And then there's the 11th circuit upheld it. so it sounds like the court doesn't want to hear that issue right now.

I don't know, we'll see. The good news though is that the circuit court in that case, they turned down the ban, right? Exactly, they overturned the ban. So they overturned the ban and so by the Supreme Court denying that case, that leaves the ban, or overturning the ban in place. yeah. So Minnesota ⁓ can't have this age requirement. Yeah, and if you think about it, the reason that was overturned

At the founding, you couldn't have a precedent or analogy. If you were 18 to, I think, 42 or something like that, you had to have a gun. You had to have a musket or a rifle. Or if you were a horseman, you had to have pair of pistols. And you had to enroll in the militia. And the whole purpose of that was they didn't like standing armies. And they wanted an armed citizenry.

to repel invasion or overturn tyranny, is what we did in the American Revolution. And so to say that you can criminalize having a gun or carrying a gun or buying a gun at that age is something that has no historical support. Right. So it's clearly not supported by the text, the history or the tradition of the Second Amendment. ⁓ So the important thing as compared to the age

ban that we were just talking about is that in Ocean Tactical and in the Snoke case, the circuit courts upheld the ban. And so the Supreme Court's relisting of those requests for certiorari is important. People care about that because right now those bans are still in place. Right. Before we get our hopes up, I mean at best the Supreme Court will grant cert and then overturn these bans.

But they might not be ready for this. I don't know. And so I won't call it a worst case because it would still be valuable. If they deny cert, you can bet your bottom dollar. Thomas Alito, maybe Kavanaugh, they'll write dissents from denial of certiorari. And sometimes they can be a roadmap, just like Kavanaugh's dissent in the DC Circuit case. That's a roadmap for how these cases should be decided. And so

If you go back before Bruin, ⁓ Thomas repeatedly wrote dissents from denial of cert on the Kerry issue, ⁓ California's ban in particular. it's a valuable resource to have even a minority of justices saying the right thing about why the Supreme Court needs to resolve this issue and why this right is protected.

Do you have any sense for why they continue to relist it rather than simply deny or accept? yeah, it could be they're they're still thinking about taking the cases or it could be Thomas is taking a while to write his dissent. So but one more thing, you know, they're going to resolve the the Mexico case. He started as you need is McEnany versus Smith and Wesson. That's going to be a good decision. Yeah.

The oral argument went really good and I think we got at least seven to two. I mean, you might have Sotomayor and Jackson dissent. I'm thinking Kagan. She asked some hostile questions to the attorney for Mexico. Can you tell us what the basic issue is in that case? Well, if you go back starting in the 80s, the anti started

filing lawsuits against gun manufacturers and dealers for making guns. ⁓ Whenever you have a product in society, there's going to be a small amount of misuse of that product. It could be alcoholic beverages, could be automobiles. ⁓ And so when there would be crimes committed by third parties, like in other words criminals, ⁓ raping and murdering somebody, for example, then you're going to sue.

you know, Smith and Wesson or Colt. That's what they were doing. So Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce and Arms Act, which prohibited these kinds of suits. It doesn't matter what Congress does that's positive or what the Supreme Court says. You're going to find courts who are going to uphold whatever shenanigans is going on. So the First Circuit upheld that lawsuit that Mexico brought. We're responsible.

This is the NRA show. These people who make guns and sell them, they're responsible for what the drug gangs do in Mexico. know, Mexico can't, because of corruption for one thing. That's the allegation, Yeah. So, but there has to be proximate cause between, you know, the injury and the cause of it. So if I, you tell me I'm going to rob a bank, can you loan me your gun?

Yeah, I'm going to be liable too. ⁓ But when you have a manufacturer make a gun sell to lawful distributors who sells to lawful dealers who sells to somebody who passes the background check, if you get some guns ending up going across the border in New Mexico, and that's crime too, and getting in the hands of cartels, there's no proximate cause between

what the original sale or manufacturer and what happened. So you alluded to this. often use the example. It would be like suing Ford Motor Company because somebody drove their vehicle while drunk and hurt someone and killed somebody. there's no almost nobody believes that Ford Motor Company is responsible for that person driving drunk. Right. Just in the same way, Smith and Wesson is not responsible for somebody using their product unlawfully.

To show you how far some of these courts, lower courts will go, the First Circuit Court of Appeals said, well, this would be the same, the fact that Smith & Wesson made this gun, be about the same as if a gun company sent an army or a group of terrorists down to Mexico City and they shot the place up. Same thing. Like, please, what a stupid analogy that is. Well, ⁓ we've talked about Ocean Tactical and the Snoop case. ⁓

I'm going to ask you one of the most dangerous questions in the world. I'm ask you to get out your crystal ball. Where do you see the Supreme Court going with the Second Amendment in the next term, either this term or next? Well, I'm going to take a positive note. think there are six justices who at least agree the Second Amendment is a right. Three of them don't really believe that. I don't know where they're going to go. mean, they might

And this goes with any kind of issue they're resolving. They're going to uphold some laws and reject some. And so it'd be difficult. And also we're faced with the fact that we have a lot of criminal laws and people bring cases or appeals to the courts based on felons in possession or, OK, I get busted with marijuana and I've got a gun. Can you

you know, deprive me of Second Amendment rights because there's some courts say no, that's not good enough. If you were like owned drugs at the time, then that would probably be upheld, but not mere possession. They try to make an analogy to the like drunken public laws from the 19th century, but it doesn't work because we're talking about a drug user, not a person owned drugs at the time of the gun use. ⁓ There's other criminal

Well, you know, like there's ever been committed committed to a mental institution, you know, you might have been committed when you were 13 years old briefly, and then that follows you the rest of your life unless you can get a restoration of your civil rights. Right. And so there's a lot of criminal laws like that besides these civil cases that are being brought about, say, sensitive places. That's another big issue. When the Supreme Court resolved Bruin.

The state of New York and California and some other states said, okay, you can get a permit to carry, but you can't carry it anywhere. Yeah. It doesn't need every place as a sensitive place. Yeah, just about. if it's a, you know, a thousand yards from a school or, ⁓ but one thing Thomas said in the, brewing case, you couldn't just ban guns and all of Manhattan. Right. And yet I'm working on a case now, Fairfax County, Virginia.

⁓ Our parkland, public parks in Fairfax County is twice the size of Manhattan. we've, we're arguing this case in a couple of weeks, but the Fourth Circuit, I won't predict what they're gonna do, because that's naughty, but you can go figure. They've upheld every law so far against the Second Amendment. It's mostly woods, and so you have this ban on, so this ⁓ single woman,

walking dogs or something can't carry a gun in this parkland and there's nobody there in most places every now and then there'll be a ball field or something like that but ⁓ so those the sensitive places thing that's another big issue i'm concerned somewhat that the supreme court seems to be dragging its feet on the ocean tactical in the snope case i'm not terribly pessimistic about it but i think the other one thing i am optimistic about is that

the dynamic has changed since the election with the Department of Justice, right? Because with the Rahimi case, the government tried to fast track that to the Supreme Court because Rahimi was a bad dude, a non sympathetic complainant or a non sympathetic party. And I think we're hopefully going to see a lot less of that from the Department of Justice and the government side. Yeah. mean, Merrick Garland.

He sprinted to the court and beat the door down to get him to take the Rahimi case. But I think President Trump has issued a ⁓ presidential proclamation basically about the Second Amendment. Agencies have to look into any of their regulations, including the Department of Justice, and that's being done. And then we had the three cases, or rather...

three regulatory overreaches by the Biden administration about pistols with stabilizing braces, engaged in the business, and frame a receiver. The court resolved the frame a receiver issue with basically a nothing burger decision. But I think Pam Bondi's going to turn the tables around. think there's, look, the new chief counsel at ATF is a Second Amendment scholar.

who I know and he's very good on the issues. knows... Greenlee? No, he's Isle of... Oh, Isle That's right. Who's that? It's... Oh, I apologize. I remember who you're talking about. Shoot. Robert Leiter. Leiter, that's right. Yes. Some of his scholarship has been cited in Supreme Court cases on the Second Amendment. Yeah. Really good guy. And so I think... He spoke at the NRA legal seminar.

at least on a couple of occasions. yeah. And so, you know, we'll see some changes. I think I don't think the administration is going to do anything bad. Like they were pushing the envelope and underbiting, trying to make things as worse as possible. And like you make one mistake as an FFL, they're going to revoke their license. That's been done away with now, that policy. Well, Stephen, I really appreciate you coming back on the Forge of Freedom. I hope that

This has provided people some context or clarity about where we currently stand. I know we don't have all the answers. We can't look into our crystal ball and predict what the Supreme Court's going to do next. But I hope that people have a better understanding of where we currently stand. So do you have any parting thoughts about what you're looking for or what? Well, remember the man in you too much, Casey Ross the Royal, the future's not ours to see. And so that's.

kind of where I stand on predicting Supreme Court action. But I do think on the Mexico case, that's going to be positive. And I don't know whether they're going to take the rifle ban case and the magazine ban case. I would hope they do. But if they don't, I hope there's some good dissents and that they'll come back to that. Where can people find out more about your work? I'm going to pull up your website. Is that the best place for people to find what you're up to?

Yeah, StephenHalbert.com has got the books. Some of these books have been published in other languages. I've got a big following in Brazil. A couple of my books on Nazi gun control were translated into Portuguese. And so I've always thought that this is an international right, the right to resist tyranny and to have arms for self-defense. And I've always thought that we really should be present in

in Europe and in other countries in terms of trying to spread the Second Amendment gospel so to speak. Yeah, and it's really an individual right, right? It's a human right, basic human right. people, right. So the more we can spread these ideas worldwide the better. Yeah. All right, well Stephen I really appreciate you coming on the Gorge of Freedom. Thank you for having me. I enjoyed the Good talk to you again. Yeah, exactly. Well everybody thanks for tuning in. This is going to conclude our time here at the Voices of the Second Amendment.

⁓ From the NRA annual meeting. I hope you enjoyed the conversations that we've had here this weekend I'll be releasing each of these conversations in individual episodes sometime next week So stay tuned for those as always you can find us on at forgerfreedom.com and on X YouTube and Facebook at forger freedom Thanks everybody and until next time remember you are the forger freedom