SAF filed McDonald v. Chicago the same day Heller was decided. Two years later, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment applies to states and cities through the Fourteenth Amendment.

That ruling is the reason your carry permit isn't just a federal courtesy that Chicago can ignore. Before McDonald, a city could theoretically ban handguns outright and hide behind the argument that Heller only constrained federal law. That's not academic — that was the actual legal landscape in 2010.

SAF operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which means it can accept tax-deductible donations but faces restrictions on direct political lobbying — a key structural distinction from its sister organization CCRKBA.

This is the part most people skip over and probably shouldn't. SAF fights in courtrooms, CCRKBA fights in legislatures — Gottlieb built two separate tools for two separate jobs. Your donation to SAF funds litigation, not phone banking. Whether you think that's a better use of money than a lobbying org is a fair debate, but at least understand what you're funding.

SAF's relationship with the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) is more complicated — both organizations are actively litigating Second Amendment cases post-Bruen, sometimes on parallel tracks in the same circuits. They occasionally coordinate, occasionally compete for plaintiff pools.

Parallel litigation in the same circuits can cut both ways — sometimes you want multiple bites at the apple, sometimes you get bad precedent from a weaker case that poisons the circuit before the stronger case gets there. FPC and SAF both doing post-Bruen work isn't automatically good news. Case selection matters as much as caseload.

Between SAF, FPC, and the NRA's legal arm, there's no shortage of Second Amendment litigation happening right now — which one do you actually support financially and why?

Read the full article in The Handbook → | By The Boise Gun Club Team