According to Bloomberg.com, three of Wall Street’s biggest municipal-bond underwriters have seen business grind to a halt in Texas after the state enacted a law that blocks governments from working with banks that have curtailed ties to the gun industry. Since the law took effect on September 1, 2021, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have not managed a single municipal-bond sale in the state, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Is your state doing enough to fight for your gun rights? This is how it gets done.

Currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen will, perhaps, decide whether the Second Amendment allows the government to prohibit ordinary law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns outside the home for self-defense. On its face, this is simple. New York has had a handgun licensing system for more than 100 years. New York prohibits its citizens from carrying a handgun outside of their home without a license, and it requires permit applicants to convince a licensing officer they have “proper cause” to carry a concealed firearm. Petitioners Robert Nash and Brendan Koch argued that the New York law violates their constitutional right to bear arms. They lost at the district court level, wherein that court said: “Nash and Koch do not satisfy the ‘proper cause’ requirement because they do not ‘face any special or unique danger to [their] life.’” Eight other states have similar “show cause” laws: California, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Maryland, Delaware, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. All of their laws will be affected by the decision — hopefully, negatively. The U.S. Supreme Court was scheduled to hear oral arguments on Nov. 3.

Hit back twice as hard. A federal judge has found the Washington, D.C. city government liable for wrongfully arresting six people between 2012 and 2014 who were accused of violating its ban on carrying handguns in public. U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth’s decision could clear the way for claims for damages by as many as 4,500 people similarly arrested under the law the courts overturned in 2014, according to court filings. The Supreme Court struck down the District’s long-standing ban on handguns in a landmark 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, which found that the Second Amendment protected individuals’ right to own a gun in the home. “The District violated the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights by arresting them, detaining them, prosecuting them, and seizing their guns based on an unconstitutional set of D.C. laws,” Lamberth wrote.

Yes, yes D.C. did that, plain as day. We’ll see if Lamberth’s well-thought-out legal reasoning can stand scrutiny by judges above him who hate the Second Amendment.

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This article was published in the November issues of Gun Tests, and is reproduced with permission of the author.