by Brad Griffin

Attorney Kyle Bristow of the Clinton Twp., MI-based Bristow Law, PLLC, and Attorney Jason Van Dyke of the Plano, TX-based The Van Dyke Law Firm, PLLC, scored a major legal victory for gun rights today in Kolbe v. Hogan, which was before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. This federal appellate court is one level below the United States Supreme Court and its rulings are binding on Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia, and are highly persuasive for other jurisdictions.

In a 2-1 written opinion, the Fourth Circuit judges ruled that a Maryland law that prohibits citizens from owning high-capacity firearms—such as AR-15 and AK-47 rifles—implicates the Second Amendment, and that the law is therefore to be subjected to strict scrutiny review. Strict scrutiny review is the most stringent method a law can be reviewed by a court and is applicable whenever a fundamental right is infringed upon. Thus, the Fourth Circuit held that private ownership by American citizens of high-capacity AR-15 and AK-47-style rifles is a fundamental right.

The legal news website Legal Insurrection wrote that the Fourth Circuit opinion will see to it that “virtually all gun control laws will be found unconstitutional if subject to strict scrutiny.” Said the legal scholars of said website,

We know full well that should strict scrutiny be applied to the Second Amendment, the vast majority of gun laws currently on the books would inescapably be found to be unconstitutional infringements of the Second Amendment, and discarded.

In short, the application of strict scrutiny to the Second Amendment, just as it is applied to the other rights enumerated in the Constitution, would be a complete game changer on gun rights on a national scale.

On behalf of the Traditionalist Youth Network, LLC, Bristow and Van Dyke submitted an amicus curiae brief in which it was argued that the Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right of our people to keep and bear weapons that the State of Maryland’s attorneys argued are “weapons of war” and not to be permitted to be owned by American citizens. The Fourth Circuit cited Bristow and Van Dyke by name as having submitted their amicus brief and quoted legal authorities throughout their written opinion that were persuasively cited by said attorneys in their brief.

Attorney Kyle Bristow opined, “We had the unconstitutional legislation in our sights and shot down the arguments of the opposition. The fundamental right of our people to keep and bear arms has been—and will continue to be—protected.”

Attorney Van Dyke said, “Shots are being fired in America’s ongoing Culture War, and legislators who have no respect for Second Amendment rights will simply not be able to disarm our people.”

This is not the first time that Bristow and Van Dyke have teamed up to stand up for our people. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center once quipped in an interview with a homosexual rights website, “Let’s hope the court chooses not to pay attention to the legal musings of Kyle Bristow.”

To date, courts not only listen to the “legal musings” of Bristow and Van Dyke, but emphatically accept them. For example, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit accepted the arguments of the duo when it ruled that homosexual marriage is not a fundamental right, and Bristow and Van Dyke have been instrumental in helping women —who tend to be White—remove from the Internet nude photographs that their former lovers or computer hackers publish there so as to torment them.

Ironically, the SPLC complained on their website on October 8, 2014, about the amicus brief filed by Bristow and Van Dyke to defend the right to keep and bear arms, and a leftist complained that in their brief, “They argue that citizens should definitely have access to military grade weapons and technology cause, you know, brown people. No really – that’s the gist of their argument.” (In fairness to the leftist journalist, the brief did cite the New Century Foundation’s The Color of Crime as an authoritative source.)

The SPLC and those acting in concert with it have good cause to be worried about the “legal musings” of Bristow and Van Dyke: although the fellow travelers of the SPLC control the court of public opinion, courts of law are battlefields on which Bristow and Van Dyke dominate.

The Fourth Circuit opinion can be read online here . The amicus brief filed by Bristow and Van Dyke can be read online here .