The Weekly Reload Podcast

Stephen Gutowski

A podcast from The Reload that offers sober, serious firearms reporting and analysis. It focuses on gun policy, politics, and culture. Tune in to hear from Reload Founder Stephen Gutowski and special guests from across the gun world each week.

  1. HACE 4 DÍAS

    2A Scholar David Kopel Reacts to SCOTUS Weed and Guns Oral Arguments

    This week, we're taking a deep dive into the Supreme Court's latest Second Amendment case. The Court spent nearly two hours debating the merits of US v. Hemani. They were trying to figure out whether the modern ban on drug users, even just those who smoke weed, is relevantly similar to Founding Era laws related to "habitual drunkards." The back-and-forth seemed to create some interesting splits among the justices and scrambled the Court's usual ideological coalitions. To analyze the fallout from oral arguments, we have the Independence Institute's David Kopel back on the show. He has been one of the most influential Second Amendment scholars over the past 30 years, being cited in cases from the Supreme Court on down the federal judiciary. He filed a brief with the National Rifle Association arguing that the justices should side with Hemani in his challenge to the ban. Kopel said he was a bit surprised at how oral arguments seemed to go for Hemani. He had expected greater pushback from more of the justices, especially the liberal bloc. He said the majority of the Court appeared skeptical of the law's constitutionality. However, he said it is always possible that a justice doesn't vote the way their questions might imply. It's possible the liberals side with the government or Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, who were most skeptical of Hemani, end up going the other way. Still, he concluded that whatever the Court does in the case, it'll likely have a major impact just on the basis of how fresh Second Amendment jurisprudence is at this moment. Special Guest: David Kopel.

    41 min
  2. 2 MAR

    Inside a New Effort to Bridge the Gun Policy Divide

    This week, we're doing something a bit different. Instead of one guest, we have three. They are all members of a new initiative trying to break the decades-old logjam around gun policy. The participants from Bridging the Divide join the show to discuss how their detailed policy proposals differ from the ones our debate has centered around for years. Dr. Michael Siegel of Tufts University, Rob Pincus of the Second Amendment Organization, and Jonathan Lowy of Global Action on Gun Violence join the show to explain their role in the project. Dr. Siegel provides an overview of the effort, while Pincus and Lowy explain the input they provided and the compromises they reached. Pincus noted the effort isn't part of a pre-existing gun group and isn't a traditional organization at all. Instead, Siegel said it's a working group that was put together to try to update gun policy with the goal of reducing violent crime while filling the gaps in current policy. He said a big part of achieving that goal involved getting input from gun owners and gun-rights activists in addition to academics and gun-control advocates. The working group, which went public on Thursday, produced a comprehensive policy plan complete with model legislation. They propose new variations for background checks, extreme risk protection orders, community violence intervention, suicide prevention, firearm prohibitions, dealer regulations, gun storage, and gun injury prevention. All of them have been updated to address some long-running complaints about their effectiveness or their potential to infringe on people's gun rights. Pincus and Lowy, unlikely bedfellows given that one owns a gun company and the other has made a career of suing them, said they were proud of the work the group has done and felt their input was actually incorporated into the proposals. They both explained what they thought was the best idea in the plan and why they felt it was important for them to be involved. Siegel admitted the policy proposals are likely to face plenty of criticism, even with the effort to try and address many of the long-standing critiques associated with each of them. He said it would likely be an uphill battle to get the proposals turned into law. But he noted the group included lawmakers as part of the working group, and he said he is confident in their plan to get other legislators on board. Special Guests: Jonathan Lowy, Michael Siegel, and Rob Pincus.

    51 min
  3. 16 FEB

    A Florida Gun Lawyer on His Fight with California Over 3D-Printed Gun Files

    This week, we're looking at the bleeding edge of gun-rights legal fights: 3D-printed gun file sharing. After a years-long hiatus, news just dropped in one of the major legal skirmishes. The Third Circuit threw out a challenge to New Jersey's file-sharing ban on Thursday. Just before that, California sued our guest for publishing gun files on the open internet. That guest is Florida gun-rights lawyer Matt Larosiere. He joins the show to explain California's claims against him as well as the federal lawsuit he filed against California in Florida. Larosiere accused California of filing suit for purely political reasons. He argued the state's claims are weak and its demand for nearly $8 million in damages is absurd. He claimed the state is effectively trying to impose its will on other states, even though neither he nor the other defendants ever went to California or intentionally shared information with anyone there. He believes the Constitution is clear that gun designs and files are protected speech. Even if you drill down into more technical computer code associated with 3D printing of guns, Larosiere argued those files are protected by the First Amendment as well. That's why he was hopeful the test the Third Circuit created for judging the nexus between gun files and the First Amendment would actually help his case, despite that court ultimately dismissing a claim against New Jersey's file-sharing ban. Special Guest: Matt Larosiere.

    58 min

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A podcast from The Reload that offers sober, serious firearms reporting and analysis. It focuses on gun policy, politics, and culture. Tune in to hear from Reload Founder Stephen Gutowski and special guests from across the gun world each week.

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