Machine Gun Blues
What to know: The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that “machine guns”—automatic weapons—aren’t protected by the Second Amendment.
https://www.buckeyefirearms.org/eleventh-circuit-machine-guns-not-protected-second-amendment
The TPPF take: TPPF is suing the federal government over the ban on machine guns—but it’s not about the Second Amendment.
“Ever since the Supreme Court held that Congress could regulate homegrown wheat that never crossed state lines or even entered the market, Congress has expanded the Commerce Clause’s scope to regulate nearly anything that can be bought or sold,” says TPPF’s Eric Heigis. “But few of these criminal laws actually have any tangible connection to interstate commerce.”
For more on the machine gun ban, click here.
Strategy
What to know: The Trump administration’s Western Hemisphere policies are coming into focus.
The TPPF take: What we see now from the second Trump Administration is an overdue correction that is directionally sound.
“America has a strategy in the Western Hemisphere, and the Trump Administration is taking the United States and its armed forces places it has never been, for reasons it has never confronted in quite this way,” says TPPF’s Joshua Treviño. “As policy, it is eminently defensible. The verdict of history will refrain from making a pronouncement until the age to come. What we can say, though, is this: it is happening, and it is popular.”
For more on the Western Hemisphere, click here.
https://thecannononline.com/americas-war-in-the-americas/
Love and Marriage
What to know: Marriage and birth rates continue to decline nationwide.
https://www.ncregister.com/news/the-marriage-crisis-driving-america-s-fertility-decline
The TPPF take: Housing affordability directly shapes whether young adults can form independent households, influencing marriage, fertility, and long-term family stability.
“Rising housing costs and limited supply increase co-residence with parents, delaying transitions into marriage, and reducing childbearing rates,” says TPPF’s Ben Crockett. “Starter homes and family-sized housing have largely disappeared due to zoning, land-use regulations, and minimum lot size mandates.”
For more on marriage and birth rates, watch this.
https://www.texaspolicy.com/multimedia/article/why-are-birth-and-marriage-rates-falling