WASHINGTON — There is a movement to disarm Americans, although it is often unrecognizable due to its slow and pernicious creep into everyday culture, but on September 24, the movement may have overplayed its hand with the introduction of a bill to regulate airguns as firearms.
On September 24, Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-CA) introduced H.R. 10583 (known as “Garrett’s Law”), a measure that he asserts is in response to the suicide of a constituent’s son, who admittedly had mental health problems.
“We always have to be on the lookout for laws like these,” said the National Association for Gun Rights in a post on X, adding, “They know that airguns, airsoft, paintball guns and similar devices are often a gateway to a deeper interest in firearms, and a safe way for young people to get into the space. They want to turn us into Australia, where even a gel blaster requires a government permit, if it isn’t banned outright.”
The proposed bill has all the hallmarks of other gun control measures, including capitalizing on an emotionally volatile incident, the creation of new classes of firearms, and a move to regulate lawful items, a legal tactic that always precedes eventual confiscation.
Airguns are not regulated – nor defined – as firearms under federal law, a fact that Rep. Mullin calls a “loophole,” going on to add that “If a weapon is powerful enough to kill, it should be subject to the same common-sense safety standards as any other gun.”
Nothing in the bill or press release addresses firearms training, mental healthcare, or crisis intervention.
The bill would create a new class of firearms it labels “lethal air guns” and defines them through the following arbitrary criteria:
- A .177 caliber pellet expelled at a muzzle velocity of not less than 800 feet per second.
- A .22 caliber pellet expelled at a muzzle velocity of not less than 500 feet per second.
- A .25 caliber pellet expelled at a muzzle velocity of not less than 450 feet per second.
- Any metallic pellet above .25 caliber.
The bill, if successful, would require airgun manufacturers to become federal firearms licensees, imposing massive and debilitating administrative, serialization, and record-keeping requirements.
Who is Behind the Bill
Rep. Mullin’s press release states that “This bill has been endorsed by GIFFORDS and March For Our Lives,” two groups that have well-documented connections to dark money sources from globalist-backed funds like Sixteen Thirty, New Venture Fund, and Open Society Action Fund.
Giffords bills itself as “a leader in the movement to end gun violence in America,” yet its history belies that stated agenda. The predecessor to Giffords Law Center, Legal Community Against Violence, was launched in an effort to ban “cheap” handguns. Today, Giffords lobbies heavily to ban America’s most popular firearm, the AR-15.
To complete their propaganda narrative as being pro-gun while promoting “common-sense gun laws,” Giffords created “Gun Owners for Safety,” a group it says is made up of gun owners in nine states. Yet even a casual reading of the group’s material focuses inordinately on gun storage, mischaracterized gun death data, and assertions that the “gun industry” is at fault, which is nothing short of ironic given that its gun owners buy firearms from those companies.
(Other gun control groups, like Everytown for Gun Safety, take similar approaches, yet push decidedly anti-gun rhetoric. News2A contributor and firearms instructor, Terra Semaia, took an Everytown for Gun Safety firearms training course, and offers her full expose here.)
What Real Firearms Safety Looks Like
While gun control groups like Giffords and Everytown throw around phrases like “gun safety” and “education”, pro-2A programs like the Kids S.A.F.E. Foundation have been leading the nation in teaching firearms safety to parents and children since 2016.
The Oregon-based non-profit, founded by firearms instructor Derek LeBlanc, teaches hands-on, age-appropriate child and teen firearms safety with the goal of promoting safe firearms handling and preventing firearms accidents. To date, they have trained over 30,000 children in 76 locations across 11 states.
“At the Kids S.A.F.E. Foundation, we believe that teaching young people about firearm safety is about much more than firearms. It’s about responsibility, discipline, confidence, respect, and giving kids an opportunity to participate in shooting sports in a safe and structured environment,” said Derek LeBlanc, president of the Kids S.A.F.E. Foundation.
On September 3, Kids S.A.F.E. Foundation announced a sponsorship partnership with Volquartsen Firearms to bolster support for youth shooting sports via “education, safety, mentorship, and positive experiences on the range.” Learn more about that partnership.
