By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Described by moderator Cheryl Todd as “our favorite rebel against 2A tyranny,” syndicated radio host Dana Loesch told the audience at this year’s Gun Rights Policy Conference that the current string of legal victories is not adding to the Second Amendment.
“We’re not winning things back,” Loesch declared. “We’re restoring what was stolen from us. Our rights. Our freedoms.”
A veteran of the Second Amendment battle, Loesch—a Texas resident—opened her remarks reminding the room full of activists that they “have to keep fighting.”
Acknowledging the court victories that have been achieved in recent years, she candidly admitted that it is “weird.” For decades, Loesch said, the courts treated the Second Amendment as a second class right.
“Judges would kind of nod at it,” she said, “and then sort of balance it away with whatever compelling government interest a city attorney could dream up, right?”
“That ended with Heller,” Loesch added. “It ended a little bit more in 2022 when you had the Bruen decision.”
She called those rulings “amazing victories,” while noting that it took a lot of work to reach this point.
Loesch mentioned the Wolford decision striking down what the gun rights community has called “the vampire rule,” which required legally-armed Hawaii citizens to first obtain permission from the owners of private property open to the public before they could carry their firearms on the premises.
“This is one of the stupidest things Ive ever seen in my life,” she commented.
She hailed the court ruling in August which said registration requirements for certain firearms and accessories under the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA) are unconstitutional for members of litigating parties in the aftermath of the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, which eliminated the $200 that justified the registration scheme.
Loesch called it a “huge victory and it’s not a narrow one.”
But there is much more on the horizon, and Loesch admitted she is looking forward to the oral arguments coming up before the U.S. Supreme Court—scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 2—on the consolidated cases challenging bans on AR-15 and other semiautomatic rifles. Loesch said much credit goes to the Second Amendment Foundation, which co-sponsored the conference with the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, for getting these cases before the high court.
“It is not luck,” she said. “It is strategy.”
Loesch also stressed the importance of voting in the upcoming midterm elections.
Moreover, she said gun owners “have to take our wins, and we have to take them incrementally.”
“It can’t be all or nothing all the time,” she cautioned, “as much as I would love for it to be, and if I could snap my fingers…I would in a heartbeat make that a reality.”
However the fight continues, and Loesch says this translates to more opportunity to get more people involved.
