NRA

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An Insight Into The Thinking Of William Brewer (Updated)

May 15, 2019 by

William Brewer III is the outside counsel for the NRA and is the lead counsel in their case against Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York State. He is also at the center of some of the controversy surrounding the NRA due to his bills.

I stumbled across this very recent article written by Brewer in Texas Lawyer. The article is entitled Advocacy as Art:  Lawyers Must Engage in Issues and Crisis Management. The article is behind a paywall but registration is free and you can read up to 3 articles per month.

His thesis in this article is that in large cases attorneys must manage both the courtroom litigation and the public relations outside the courtroom. I think you are seeing that very clearly in that he is the one who provides the response in many cases to the billing controversies, the Ack-Mac leaks, and the case against Ack-Mac itself.

From the article:

The fusion of legal and communications resources can produce more compelling, effective advocacy—enabling clients to favorably posture themselves, mitigate reputational damage and have a voice in the telling of the stories that define them.

What’s more, lawyers who manage issues and crisis management are able to help clients gain strategic advantages in their advocacy and recognize improvements in operational efficiencies, including cost-savings.

When communications professionals are deployed within law firms, the resources are more quickly and readily available. They are unencumbered by the drag of expensive “ramp up” periods often required by PR firms—which often renders the messaging “late” and diminishes its effectiveness.

There is also an inherent advantage in having law, media and politics all directed under the umbrella of the attorney-client relationship. The advocacy can be coordinated and responsive— working in alignment with a client’s legal objectives, elements of which might not be fully appreciated by a siloed PR firm.

If you read that last paragraph closely, you can see what he is trying to do for his firm with the NRA. He is seeking to be the legal counsel, the Ack-Mac PR firm, and the NRA-ILA wrapped up into one neat package. In other words, he wants to be the one-stop shop for all their needs and in turn get all the money.

Even if Brewer was the best attorney on Earth – and that is in considerable doubt – he still doesn’t have the necessary infrastructure to also provide the public relations and lobbying clout that the NRA needs. You need only to look over the list of professionals at his firm to see that.

I think there is a lot of danger for the NRA in what he is attempting to do  in having “law, media, and politics all directed under the umbrella of the attorney-client relationship.” While the bar canon posits that he should put his clients first, his ethical lapses in the past make one suspect that he will first do what is right for Bill Brewer. If that means sucking the coffers of the NRA dry, so be it.

UPDATE: David Codrea has a post on William Brewer along with links to Open Secrets questioning just if this is really a “pro-gun” attorney. According to Open Secrets which tracks campaign donations, Mr. Brewer gave $2,700 to the campaign of Beto aka Robert Francis O’Rourke and zip to Sen. Ted Cruz. He has also given money to such “pro-gun” luminaries as Al Franken, Hillary Clinton, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Dick Durbin.

I wouldn’t care if Brewer was the real life reincarnation of Perry Mason he gave money to Beto F’ing O’Rourke. That alone should make you question his judgment.

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A Great Summation Of The NRA’s Problems

May 10, 2019 by 2 Comments

Lawrence Person in his Battleswarm Blog does a great job in providing a summation of the issues facing the NRA. I think it is a must read. In full disclosure he does quote me in his post but don’t hold that against him!

As to getting its house in order, he writes:

There are some that claim cleaning up the NRA would offer too much succor to the gun-grabbers. But the organizational dysfunction and self-dealing is already out in the open, and is already hurting the NRA’s effectiveness (and has been for several years). If not now, when? Better to do it now, the year before an Presidential election, with Republicans holding the White House and the Senate able to block gun-grabbing initiatives, than during it.


Other than being a member, I am very far indeed from the center of NRA power. For all the grumbling over the NRA caving over bump-stocks, there’s no other organization with the size, scope and political power of the NRA to protect Second Amendment rights in America. But to do that, the NRA has to be on solid organizational and financial footing, and right now it does not appear to be on either. The NRA has to get its own house in order, this year, or expect forces hostile to it and its goals to do it for them.

Sebastian at Shall Not Be Questioned also links to this blog post. He endorses the idea of an independent outside audit team from one of the Big Four accounting firms to come in and do an audit. He is a bit skeptical that it will happen and that even if it does happen then the results will be kept internally.

But just because its sensible doesn’t mean it will happen. I’ve seen a lot of sensible things fall by the wayside in a non-profit and we don’t have to deal with paid staff who also have opinions, and have a lot more time and incentive to manipulate things to come out in their favor. I’m not holding my breath. Even if it does happen, it’ll probably be kept internal.

I hope he is wrong in his skepticism but he has always had a better feel for the inner workings in Fairfax than most anyone else not named Knox.

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A Heavy Artillery Salvo Has Been Fired On The NRA

April 28, 2019 by 2 Comments

Much of what has been said by politicians about the NRA and everything negative that has appeared recently in the media of any sort should be considered the equivalent of sniping. It might take out one or two people but not the whole organization. That was then.

The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James (D-NY) has now fired what I would consider the preparatory barrage in the effort to dissolve the NRA. As someone noted to me, James is under pressure to act and she did on Friday.

From NPR reporting on the NRA Annual Meeting:

Even as the NRA struggled to handle its internal divisions, an external threat emerged this weekend in the form of a new investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“The Office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James has launched an investigation related to the National Rifle Association (NRA),” a spokesperson for the attorney general told NPR. “As part of this investigation, the Attorney General has issued subpoenas. We will not have further comment at this time.”

The NRA has received a document preservation notice in connection with the investigation being undertaken by the New York attorney general, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The NRA responded to the announcement of the investigation by pledging its cooperation.

“The NRA will fully cooperate with any inquiry into its finances,” said William A. Brewer III, an outside lawyer for the NRA. “The NRA is prepared for this, and has full confidence in its accounting practices and commitment to good governance.”

 This is serious.

It is even more serious because as evidenced by the NRA Meeting of the Members today too many people think just ignoring it will make it go away. The matter is NOT going away.

Compounding this is the NRA’s outside counsel who has a checkered past in terms of legal ethics. He was sanctioned in Texas and his appeal of it was upheld by the Texas Appeals Court last year.

If the NRA is going to use an outside counsel, I might suggest getting the very best – and cleanest – New York non-profit law specialist and let him or her handle it. However, given Brewer’s apparent hold on the attention of certain NRA executives, I doubt this will happen.

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Head In The Sand Approach Doesn’t Help Gun Rights – Or Gun Rights Organizations

April 26, 2019 by

The Illinois State Rifle Association has always been at the forefront in the fight for gun rights. They are the NRA affiliate in the Prairie State but have often paired with the Second Amendment Foundation on lawsuits. I’ve met their executive director Richard Pearson at a number of Gun Rights Policy Conferences. I respect the work he does in a state with so many challenges to the Second Amendment.

Sometimes, however, you have to disagree with people respect and call out a head in the sand attitude. Thus is the case with something Richard wrote in today’s ISRA Thursday Bulletin.

The NRA is under constant attack these days. These attacks come in a couple of ways. First, of course, is just a straightforward attack on the Second Amendment and law-abiding gun owners. That is you and me folks. The second part of the attack is a propaganda campaign to make members doubt their own organization. Don’t fall for it. This whole propaganda attack is funded by Bloomberg and others like him. Bloomberg and company are trying to erode the loyal NRA base and prevent potential new members from joining. Has the NRA ever made any mistakes? Probably, but so has every other organization. If the NRA did, it was with the best intentions in trying to defend our Second Amendment. I have no qualms about that.

He is correct that the NRA is under attack from the gun prohibitionists.  However, I take exception to what Richard characterizes as the second part of the attack. Yes, The Trace is a Bloomberg funded organization and yes it contributed to the reporting in The New Yorker. However, as a NRA Board Member said to me, facts don’t lie. What was printed in The New Yorker is an expose’ of the NRA but that doesn’t make it wrong or incorrect. Moreover, self-dealing and feathering one’s own nest through insider deals is not “with the best intentions in trying to defend our Second Amendment.” What those involved have done is put the future of the organization at risk through their personal avarice.

I have plenty of qualms about that.

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Jeff Knox – Two Options

April 23, 2019 by 4 Comments

Jeff Knox, son of the late Neal Knox, is a person I like and respect. We’ve met at various NRA Annual Meetings and Gun Rights Policy Conferences over the years. I’ve come to appreciate his great love for the NRA and what it could be as well as his extensive institutional memory. He has been fighting a long but so-far losing battle to reform the NRA in an effort to recapture what the Cincinnati Revolt of 1977 was supposed to institutionalize. Some may have seen his efforts as quixotic as he has been a lone voice in the wilderness arguing that change was needed for lo these many years. Nonetheless, he was right and the recent revelations regarding the NRA are providing him some vindication.

Things are coming to a head. As I wrote yesterday, Everytown for Gun Safety has filed a formal complaint with the Internal Revenue Service. This shot across the bow from the gun prohibitionists may only be the first step. Moreover, Attorney General Letitia James (D-NY) could well move to dissolve the NRA for being in violation of New York’s stringent non-profit laws as the organization is chartered in the State of New York.

Jeff, in an opinion piece published late yesterday in Ammoland, posits there are now only two options going forward to save the NRA.

Option 1. A majority of the Board circles the wagons in defense of Wayne LaPierre and his pals and tries to weather the storm. (They’ll fail, and the whole ship will sink.)

or

Option 2. A majority of the Board fires LaPierre and other executives (or accepts their resignations) and nullifies their contracts, suspends all vendor contracts pending thorough review and renegotiation, and purges culpable members of their own body – demonstrating a commitment to safeguarding NRA assets on behalf of the membership. (Plugging the holes and possibly saving the ship.)

The days of muddling through are in the past. The enemies of the Second Amendment are seeing to that.

Jeff goes on to write:

The current NRA Board of Directors have a slim chance of saving the NRA from total ruin, but they must act swiftly and decisively.

They must expunge everyone involved in even the appearance of corruption. Including board members who failed in their oversight obligations and individuals like Josh Powell the genius behind many of the NRA’s recent disasters like Carry Guard and a known manipulator of Wayne LaPierre’s decision making. They must halt all outside contracts until they can be thoroughly reviewed and either canceled or renegotiated. As much as possible needs to be brought in-house and run under the direct oversight of the board. This action may mean the end of things like Ackerman McQueen run NRA-TV, so do not be surprised if they pack up shop one day soon.

All of the significant, life-threatening issues facing NRA revolve around just three operational areas: PR, fundraising, and political spending. Suspending operations in those three areas, and bringing them under tight, in-house control for the immediate future, would put the association back on stable ground and allow it to continue operating effectively.

There will undoubtedly be repercussions from all of this, including fines, sanctions, lawsuits, and possibly criminal indictments, but all of those repercussions are on their way, regardless of what the board does now. The difference is whether those consequences will be levied against an organization that still has the people who created those problems at the helm – people who will be using NRA resources to cover their tails – or an organization that has policed itself and taken corrective action to address its problems.

If I may use the analogy of the stages of cancer, we are well beyond Stage 1 where the cancer is small and only in one area. The only question we are facing is whether it is Stage 3 where the cancer is much larger and has spread into adjacent tissues or is it Stage 4 where the cancer has metastasized to other areas of the body and survival is in doubt. Both Stage 3 and Stage 4 are bad. Treating either stage requires strong, even radical, measures if long-term survival is to have any probability of success.

This unfortunately is what we are facing. I would love to have been writing about all the new products coming out or the seminars and presentations I anticipated attending this weekend. Events of the past week dictate otherwise.

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Everytown Files Complaint With IRS Against NRA

April 22, 2019 by 3 Comments



As originally reported by The Hill on Friday, Everytown for Gun Safety has filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service asking for an investigation into the National Rifle Association and their 501(c)(4) status. Specifically, the complaint alleges that the directors, officers, and others are using income and/or assets for personal gain and that the NRA is engaged in commercial, for-profit, activities.

The letter that accompanies the IRS Form 13909 Tax-Exempt Organization Complaint (Referral) accuses the NRA of related party transactions, financial mismanagement, and lack of transparency. It ask that the IRS begin an investigation to see whether the NRA has violated Section 501(c)(4) laws and regulations. It further asks that if violations are found that the IRS consider what would be appropriate remedies including revocation of the NRA’s 501(c)(4) status.

This complaint follows the publication of the expose’ of the NRA in The New Yorker by Mike Spies that was published on Wednesday. It relies heavily on the accusations leveled in that article as well as an earlier article that appeared in the New York Times.

Some of the items specified in the accompanying letter include:

  • Payments to former NRA Managing Director Michael Marcellin from Lockton Affinity while being paid by the NRA.
  • Payment of $1.395 million to HWS Consulting whose owner Wayne Sheets served as Executive Director of the NRA foundation.
  • Payments of over $3 million to Crow Shooting Supply since 2008 which has been owned by Brownells since 2011. Some of these payments were while Pete Brownell served as President of the NRA.
  • Issues related to Josh Powell who serves as Chief of Staff to Wayne LaPierre.
  • Transfer of monies from the NRA Foundation to the NRA itself.

I could only imagine the damage this complaint might have done if it had been filed during the Obama Administration. As it is,  it still isn’t good. You can read the entire letter here and make your own estimate of how harmful it is to the NRA.

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More From The New Yorker

April 21, 2019 by 1 Comment

On my way home this afternoon from visiting my granddaughters, I chanced across The New Yorker Radio Hour. The lead story was on the NRA and Mike Spies article that ran this past week. It goes over much of what was written in the article but it also had excerpts from Spies’s interview with Aaron Davis who formerly worked in the NRA’s major gifts fundraising unit.

Bearing in mind that any interview that is broadcast is made up of excerpts and that those excerpts are chosen to make a point or enhance the story, the interview with Davis seems to illustrate how the aims of Ackerman McQueen and the aims of preserving and protecting the Second Amendment are at odds. Davis notes that many of those he worked with at Ack-Mac were, as he put it, “New York or Austin types” who were PR professionals first, foremost, and always. Unlike Davis, they were not believers in the NRA or the Second Amendment.

The other thing this audio broadcast illustrated is that Spies’ reporting depended on a lot of inside information from presumably disgruntled staff at the NRA including handwritten memos and other documents. I am not disappointed in the staff for spilling the beans. Rather, I’m disappointed that it took an article from an outsider with an anti-NRA agenda to illustrate the major internal problems that can and may put the organization itself at risk. By extension, it also puts the battle for the Second Amendment and gun rights at risk. Bloomberg himself couldn’t have done more damage than those tasked with supposedly advancing gun rights have done through their own avarice and self-dealing.

The New Yorker Radio Hour broadcasts on many public radio stations. Rather than have you have to search for a rebroadcast of it, I have embedded it here. The NRA portion of the episode runs approximately 20 minutes.

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The NRA Sues Their Ad Agency Ackerman McQueen (Update)

April 16, 2019 by 2 Comments

I don’t begin to know or understand all the internal politics and machinations at the National Rifle Association. I do know that advertising firm Ackerman McQueen and their PR subsidiary Mercury Group have long been considered the power behind the throne. If reports are to be believed, they are the ones who orchestrated the ascension of Wayne LaPierre and the eventual departure of the late Neal Knox. Having heard the story from multiple sources, I give them a lot of credence.

Thus, it was quite surprising to read in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal that the NRA was suing Ackerman McQueen and Mercury Group. The story has since been picked up by the New York Times, Fox News, the Washington Post, and a number of other media outlets.

The lawsuit was filed on Friday, April 12, 2019, in the Circuit Court for the City of Alexandria (Virginia). The lawsuit accuses Ackerman McQueen of impeding efforts by the NRA to inspect book and records including contracts related to the existing services agreement. This inspection is essential for the NRA Board to fulfill its fiduciary duty and to comply with New York non-for-profit law which governs the NRA’s activities since it is incorporated in that state.

The specific concerns that the NRA sought to investigate include:

  • Out of pocket expenses that lacked documentation as required by the Services Agreement
  • Lack of transparency regarding annual budgets as well as adherence to the budgets by Ackerman McQueen
  • Lack of transparency regarding “fair market value” determinations for services
  • Concerns that the NRA was being invoiced for the full salaries of NRA-Dedicated Personnel despite these people spending time on non-NRA clients
  • Refusal to provide data in writing on number of visitors, viewership numbers, and other performance metrics related to NRATV

A footnote also said that many of NRA’s stakeholders were concerned “that NRATV’s messaging – on topics far afield of the Second Amendment – deviated from the NRA’s core mission and values.” I know many of my friends in the Second Amendment community shared this concern.

I should note at this point that NRATV is owned by Ackerman McQueen and that personalities such as Cam Edwards and Ginny Simone are actually Ack-Mc employees. This, in turn, is the heart of the other major aspect of this lawsuit – the role of Oliver North with Ackerman McQueen and to whom he owes his allegiance.

The lawsuit alleges that Audit Committee of the Board of Directors sought to review the full contract between Ackerman McQueen and Col. North but was rebuffed. Moreover, North’s attorneys indicated he would only “disclose a copy of the contract to the NRA subject to AMc’s consent.”

 The NRA’s General Counsel was finally allowed to see the contract but was not allowed to have a copy. This review by the General Counsel led to many questions. These included a) was North a 3rd-party contractor or an employee of Ack-Mc with a duty of loyalty to them; b) whether previously disclosed costs borne by the NRA for the “North Contract” were accurate; and c) “whether the contract imposed obligations on Col. North that prevent him from communicating fully and honestly with other NRA fiduciaries about AMc.” Thus, the NRA says it became determined to resolve these issues.

The suit asks that Ackerman McQueen be found in breach of contract, that they be required to furnish the NRA copies of all AMc-Third Party NRA Contracts, that they be ordered to furnish the NRA with copies of annual budgets for the period 2016-2018, a list of all NRA-Dedicated personnel and the amount of time they devote to the NRA account, and copies of all records that would show the costs to the NRA or the NRA Foundation (from Jan 1, 2018 through April 1, 2019) incurred by North’s American Heroes series, from compensation to Col. North, from office space rented for Col. North or related staff, and whether each item was billed specifically to the NRA, the Foundation, or both.

Ackman McQueen contends this lawsuit is the work of the NRA’s outside counsel William Brewer III who is the in-law of their co-CEOs Revan and Angus McQueen. However, the lawsuit is brought by the Virginia law firm of  Briglia Hundley not by Mr. Brewer’s firm. Todd Rathner, NRA Board Member, speculates that the attack on Mr. Brewer is the work of the pro-AckMc faction of the Board in an effort to undermine Wayne LaPierre.

Board members Todd Rathner and Joel Friedman are on the record about the lawsuit with the New York Times.

The suit culminates the fracturing of a more than three-decade relationship between Ackerman and the N.R.A., going back to the shaping of such memorable lines as Charlton Heston’s proclaiming that his gun would have to be pried “from my cold, dead hands.” Wayne LaPierre, the longtime chief executive of the N.R.A., had previously been a steadfast champion of the Ackerman relationship.


“I think it says something about Wayne’s character, even though he’s had a long-term working business relationship with a vendor, he’s willing to do what is right and necessary for the N.R.A. and its members,” said Todd Rathner, a board member of the rifle association.


Joel Friedman, another board member, said he was dismayed that the documents had not been turned over.


“It leaves you questioning, and you can come up with all these potential different scenarios as to why, but none of them are good,” he said.


“My mind goes to: Are they overcharging us? That’s one,” he added. “Two, are there things charged to us that were not part of the contract? Then, No. 3, has there been a misallocation of personnel?”

It will be interesting to hear the discussion, if any, of this case at the NRA Annual Meeting which starts in little more than a week. As for me, the fact that Board members are finally questioning the costs as well as the role of Ackerman McQueen is good news. In a saner world, with a smaller board that held actual power, the Ackerman McQueen contract would have been put up for bid multiple times over the years. That it hasn’t is a disgrace.

UPDATE:  Sebastian at Shall Not Be Questioned had this to say, in part, about the lawsuit.

This is a struggle that needs to happen. Bitter and I are not as anti-Ack-Mac as some folks. We think there’s merit to some of their work, and they do some things do well. But we also believe their relationship with NRA is unhealthy, and there probably is not be any fixing it. Sometimes you’re just better off pulling the tooth, rather than trying to save it. This is probably one of those cases.

I had a call out of the blue late this afternoon from a person on the NRA Board. It was off the record and not for attribution. This person thinks that the lawsuit might be a smokescreen to protect the NRA from New York State. It gives the impression that they are taking their fiduciary and financial duties seriously. As both the lawsuit notes and I mentioned above, the State of New York revised their statutes to require not-for-profits to do more due diligence and to pay more attention to where members and donors money is being spent.

The rationale behind this being a smokescreen to protect the NRA is that, according to this person, the NRA had not been requiring any sort of invoices or other detailed record-keeping for services rendered in years gone by. In other words, Ack Mc said here is how much we want and please send us a check. God forbid that they were that slack but I believe it.

So that you can read the whole lawsuit, I’m embedding it at the bottom of this post.

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Standing United

March 6, 2019 by 3 Comments

The Second Amendment community is like a family. We may squabble amongst ourselves but unite when we are attacked by outsiders. This latest release from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms illustrates that. It takes aim at attempts by House Democrats to cripple the National Rifle Association through multiple investigations.

BELLEVUE, WA – Reports that the National Rifle Association is being engulfed in what one publication described as “a rapidly expanding tangle of congressional investigations” raise an important question that nobody has been asking: Is this a deliberate effort by anti-gun-rights Congressional Democrats to overwhelm the organization’s leadership and prevent NRA from fulfilling its mission to protect the Second Amendment?

That’s what the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms are wondering as House Democrats are pressing their gun control agenda.

“According to The Trace, which is funded by anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, Congress has launched six investigations of the NRA,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb. “With Democrats in control of the House, promising to push a full slate of gun control measures, that seems just a little curious.”

Gottlieb, who also chairs the CCRKBA, said it is fair to question an avalanche of investigations involving the NRA at a time when its attention should be focused squarely on renewed efforts to erode the Second Amendment.

“Are these investigations legitimate,” Gottlieb wondered, “or are they a deliberately choreographed attempt to distract the NRA’s focus when it needs to be concentrating on the battle now developing on Capitol Hill?

“We’ve been delighted to work with NRA on a number of efforts,” he continued, “including our successful lawsuits against the 2005 post-Katrina gun grab in New Orleans, the San Francisco gun ban, our joint challenge of Seattle’s attempted parks gun ban and our ongoing federal lawsuit against a gun control initiative in Washington State. So, when we see this kind of congressional onslaught at the same time Beltway anti-gunners are trying to ram through an aggressive gun control agenda, let’s just say our radar is up.”

Gottlieb said that if there are legitimate issues, they need to be explained to the nation’s 100 million gun owners.

“Otherwise,” he observed, “all of this may amount to a lot of smoke and mirrors designed to not simply distract NRA but to discredit it in the eyes of its members, supporters and allies when we all should be working together to defend our fundamental rights at a time when they are under unceasing attack.”

I agree with Alan that this is “curious” at a time when more and more gun control bills are being introduced in Congress. Indeed, I read a bill this morning that would put any semi-automatic rifle including Ruger 10/22s capable of accepting a magazine under the purview of the National Firearms Act. 

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Scott Signs Gun Control Bill Today; NRA Sues Today

March 10, 2018 by 1 Comment

Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) signed SB 7026, the Majory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Act, into law today. The bill would allow some teachers to carry firearms on campus, it allocated significant funding (approximately $500 million) to school safety, it imposed a 3-day waiting period on all firearm sales, and raised the age from 18 to 21 for all firearm purchases including shotguns and rifles. It also included some items related to mental health issues.

The bill was opposed by most Democrats in the legislature because they were against letting teachers have the opportunity to defend students with more than harsh words. They were also upset that it didn’t include universal background checks and a state assault weapons ban (sic).

After the signing, the Florida Democratic Party reiterated its opposition to the bill, which was touted as bipartisan since it passed both chambers with GOP and Democratic votes. FDP chair Terrie Rizzo said the governor and Legislature didn’t go nearly far enough.

The ban on the sale of firearms to those between the ages of 18 and 21 did not apply to law enforcement, correctional officers, or those serving in the military. The law would make it a felony for a licensed individual to sell the firearm and for a person to buy the firearm. Moreover, it also prohibited the private sale of handguns to those under the age of 21.

Within an hour of Gov. Scott signing SB 7026, the National Rifle Association filed suit in US District Court for the Northern District of Florida on behalf of their members in Florida. The suit was filed against Attorney General Pam Bondi and Commissioner of the Department of Law Enforcement Rick Swearingen in their official capacities. The suit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief against the bill on the basis that it unconstitutionally discriminates against 18 to 20 years by denying them both their Second Amendment rights and their 14th Amendment Due Process rights. It also seek an order enjoining the enforcement of FLA. STAT. § 790.065(13) by the defendants, their employees, and agents and from enforcing the ban on the sales of firearms to those aged 18 to 20.

16. Independent provisions of federal law also already significantly
constrain the right of adult citizens under the age of 21 to purchase firearms. Under
18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1), a federally licensed firearm dealer may not sell to any
individual under the age of 21 any handgun—the “quintessential self-defense
weapon” which is “the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense
in the home.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 629. Florida’s new ban broadens these
preexisting limits, by (1) extending the ban to rifles and shotguns, in addition to
handguns, and (2) prohibiting these law-abiding, adult citizens from purchasing
these firearms from any source, not just federally licensed dealers (i.e., those who

are “engaged in the business of selling firearms at wholesale or retail.” 18 U.S.C. §
921(a)(11)).

17. The effect of Florida’s age-based ban is to impose a significant,
unequal, and impermissible burden on the right to keep and bear arms of a class of
millions of law-abiding 18-to-20 year-old adult citizens.

The suit seeks both a facial and as-applied declaration that the new law is unconstitutional. With regard to the as-applied challenge, the complaint says:

32.  This ban particularly infringes upon, and imposes an impermissible
burden upon, the Second Amendment rights of those NRA Members described
above who are female. Females between the ages of 18 and 21 pose a relatively
slight risk of perpetrating a school shooting such as the one that occurred at
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, or, for that matter, a violent crime of any
kind. For example, in 2015, women in this age group accounted for only 1.8% of
arrests for violent crime, while males in the same age bracket accounted for 8.7%
of such arrests—and males between the ages of 21 and 24, who may lawfully
purchase firearms under current law, accounted for 9.2%. See Federal Bureau of
Investigation, Crime in the United States: 2015 tbls. 39 and 40, available at
https://goo.gl/8pVWnb; see also BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, WOMEN
OFFENDERS at 2, 13 (2009) (female offenders responsible for only 14% of violent
crimes, and only 10% of female offenders aged 18-20), available at
https://goo.gl/3qAJXu. Regardless of its facial validity, Florida’s ban is therefore
unconstitutional, void, and invalid as applied to women between the ages of 18 and
21.

The full complaint can be found here.