Strategy of a Gun Rights Group: Attack Online, Prevail in Court

In barely a decade, a Nevada-based group has emerged as a relentless gun rights litigant, challenging laws and regulations in at least 90 cases across 20 states.

The organization, the Firearms Policy Coalition, has battled state assault-weapons bans, defended a third grader’s right to wear a hat in school adorned with the image of a semiautomatic rifle, and challenged licensing age restrictions.

It’s also boosted membership, and its coffers, with a bombastic online campaign that regularly fires four-letter vulgarities at critics and opponents regardless of their political affiliation.

Its leader, Brandon Combs, is a California millennial who calls the AR-15 “America’s rifle,” fondly recalling purchasing the semiautomatic assault weapon. These days, the coalition claims more than 310,000 social media followers and saw its annual revenue swell to $8 million in 2023, as it focuses almost exclusively on litigation.

Backed by gun owners, retailers, and manufacturers, the nonprofit has landed on its biggest stage yet. The Supreme Court is expected to rule this term on FPC’s argument that build-at-home firearm kits aren’t subject to the Gun Control Act—a ruling that would make the so-called “ghost guns” untraceable—and could also hear the group’s challenge to Maryland’s assault weapons ban.

Abra Belke, a former lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, said the FPC hasn’t tried to pitch itself as a better version of that advocacy organization, the longstanding leader of the movement, but it does have what she called that “new car smell.” At times, it’s even partnered with the NRA, which Belke said could help it keep rising.

“You can’t take over the NRA from the outside,” she said. “But one thing you could do is become the NRA’s very powerful younger brother.”

The Next Generation

Many of the FPC’s cases target state gun laws it views as violations of the Second Amendment.

But the organization has also weighed in on cases it believes could impact gun rights or access. In 2020, FPC joined as an amicus supporting a Georgia abortion clinic’s appeal of a nearly $1.5 million jury verdict that found the clinic liable for creating a public nuisance because it attracted anti-abortion protesters. FPC warned that the decision could spark protests against businesses like gun stores in the hopes of generating a nuisance suit to close them.

FPC is also behind a 2022 free speech lawsuit against a Michigan elementary school that asked a third-grader to take off the baseball cap she’d worn for “hat day” because it said “come and take it” under an embroidered image of an AR-15. The case is now before the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

David Thompson, managing partner at Cooper & Kirk, the DC-based law firm that has worked regularly with FPC, says its role in so many cases is “quite extraordinary” considering the size of its staff and budget. FPC has a savvy legal strategy, he said. It picks good battles and the right people to be the face of those fights.

“You don’t want a plaintiff that has some sort of baggage or otherwise makes them unattractive to a court,” Thompson said.

Steve Lindley, who led the California Bureau of Firearms from 2009 to 2018, sees FPC more as “disruptors” looking to fill “that little more radical space to the right of the NRA.”

“There wasn’t a piece of legislation they didn’t hate or wouldn’t sue over,” said Lindley, who was named in lawsuits FPC brought challenging California laws and now serves as senior program and policy manager at Brady: United Against Gun Violence.

FPC has also been helped by changes in the courts and the gun-rights advocacy space.

President Donald Trump was able to stack the courts with conservative judges in his first term, specifically on the Supreme Court. The 6-3 conservative majority agreed in 2022 to significantly expand the Second Amendment by establishing a constitutional right to carry guns outside the home in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

At the same time, the NRA was starting to falter.

Since 2018, its revenue has steadily declined, according to an analysis by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and an independent audit obtained by the D.C.-based watchdog group. The NRA claims five million members, but the money it collects from annual memberships dropped from over $170 million in 2018 to $61.8 million in 2023.

A corruption scandal and legal battle with New York State Attorney General Letitia James ultimately led to last year’s ousting of its leader, Wayne LaPierre, the movement’s most visible spokesman.

“The gun rights movement is looking for new advocates and new people to lead the charge for the next generation,” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA School of Law professor who studies Second Amendment law. “FPC is well-situated to do that.”

Career in Advocacy

Combs, now 41, grew up in Fresno County, part of a central California region known for its agriculture. He had guns growing up, as he said many residents did for self-defense and hunting, and he remembers reading the magazine Shotgun News.

Jobs in construction management took him to Los Angeles and eventually the San Francisco Bay Area. That’s when he decided it was time to purchase an AR-15.

“It’s the quintessential expression, in a tool, of the right to keep and bear arms,” he said in one of two interviews with Bloomberg Law.

Combs said he was researching how to acquire one when he learned about a hearing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and decided to attend.

The case, Nordyke v. King, was over whether an ordinance banning firearms on Alameda County property violated the Second Amendment by preventing people from holding gun shows. The court tossed the lawsuit in 2012 since the county made an exception for gun shows.

Attorney Donald Kilmer represented the gun owners challenging the ban. His argument captivated Combs.

“He just delivered these amazing lines, these arguments that just hit me like a hammer,” Combs said. “I felt like I needed to understand more about it.”

Combs said he stayed after the hearing to meet and thank Kilmer—who’s since become a good friend—and went on to volunteer for various gun rights nonprofits.

He eventually became director of the California Gun Rights Foundation, one of four posts that together make gun rights advocacy his full-time job.

In addition to leading FPC, Combs is the president of the Center for Human Liberty, another nonprofit fighting for individual rights. And though not a lawyer, Combs is also the chair of the FPC’s litigation partner, FPC Action Foundation.

FPC, which has 27 employees, pays him over $305,000 a year, according to its tax forms. FPC Action Foundation kicks in another $31,800.

“I wanted to create real change and I think that I needed vehicles to do that,” Combs said.

Memes with a Mission

Litigation is the vehicle to get things done, but social media serves as FPC’s microphone.

It’s how and where it sounds off multiple times a day. Where it trumpets victories, slams critics, galvanizes members, and even finds plaintiffs.

“Help us sue the government,” it posted in November, seeking Ohioans to challenge the state’s age restrictions for firearm licenses. The website also has a “Legal Action Hotline” for anyone who’s experienced a possible civil rights violation and looking for representation.

The organization has always emphasized social media to distribute its message, according to Combs. It’s digital first, eschewing the direct mail campaigns common among many nonprofits.

X, which formerly was Twitter, is the preferred medium. In posts there, FPC targets politicians and government officials with crass language and images.

In a four-hour stretch on Jan. 15, it posted a photo-shopped image of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) as a mob boss, touted a call to “join the Grassroots FPC Army” and win a camouflage-colored SIG Sauer pistol, and sounded off on the outgoing White House occupant: “To put it more plainly for the Demential Patient-in-Chief and his Biggest Loser Number-Two: F— you. No. You’ve been evicted, now get out of our house.”

Combs acknowledges it’s bold to take swipes at a sitting president. And “people say, You know what? That’s how I feel, too,” he said.

Those tweets amass hundreds or thousands of likes and reposts. Combs declined to say exactly how many members it has, but said tens of thousands of people support FPC with small monthly or yearly donations. The group reported $4.8 million in membership donations in 2023, tax records show.

Adam Kraut, who worked at FPC for three years and now works at the Second Amendment Foundation, says his gun rights nonprofit often joins forces with FPC in legal fights. But his group doesn’t swear at its opponents on social media.

“For as many people as you turn on, I think you turn off significantly more,” said Kraut. “I’d say it’s something that people either like or they don’t and there’s not really a middle ground on that.”

Gun control advocates like Everytown for Gun Safety experience the brunt of FPC’s criticism, assailed online as “clowns” and “evil twats.” “Help us make the people at Everytown rethink their life decisions by becoming a member,” FPC posted in a December tweet.

“They’re usually hurling some sort of profanity-laden epithet at either us or at gun laws generally,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice president for law and policy at Everytown.

(Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates gun-safety measures, is backed by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg Law is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg.)

Industry Support

Like all nonprofits, FPC is not required to publicly identify its donors. In the past it has announced donations from gun manufacturers and retailers.

The FPC Action Foundation, which manages FPC’s legal work, has received at least 30 grants from other nonprofits adding up to $2.6 million since 2017, according to CauseIQ, a software tool that tracks nonprofit data. Many come from donor-advised funds, middlemen not required to disclose the contributors’ identities.

The Constitutional Defense Fund LLC, which funds litigation “pertaining to attacks on the US Constitution and freedoms of the American people,” gave $665,000 over 2021 and 2022, the records show. Another donor, the family foundation for the Iowa-based gun parts retailer Brownells, gave $185,000 in 2021.

Around the same time, FPC launched a program, called the Constitution Alliance, in which 14 companies supported its legal action and advocacy as “benefactor members.”

The group included ghost gun makers, gun manufacturers, and silencer retailers. Some of the largest gun companies, including SIG Sauer and Taurus, also gave to the organization, as well as fellow plaintiff in the ghost gun case, Polymer80.

Most of the benefactors didn’t respond to inquiries from Bloomberg Law, but Henry Repeating Arms, a gun maker that started making rifles before the Civil War, said it last donated $25,000 to the organization in 2023.

“FPC, among others, have a strong track record of getting results in court where it matters most,” Dan Clayton-Luce, a company spokesman wrote in an email.

The alliance program is no longer active, Combs said. He declined to discuss details about its benefactors.

Securing donations from manufacturers is something other gun rights organizations have struggled to do, Belke said.

“FPC appeals to groups of younger gun owners and there are manufacturers who are trying to appeal to those younger gun owners as well,” she said.

Using the Courts

Kraut, from the Second Amendment Foundation, says that groups like FPC have latched onto litigation because Congress has been slow.

“Bills aren’t exactly sailing through,” he said, adding that “courts are the way to go.”

The Supreme Court is expected to decide FPC’s challenge to the Biden Administration’s “ghost gun” regulations by July. A ruling for the government would require the build-at-home kits to be marked with serial numbers, and manufacturers and sellers to be licensed, conduct background checks, and keep transfer records.

FPC challenged the regulation along with gun owners and a company that sells gun part kits. The Second Amendment Foundation and gun manufacturers also intervened. They may even win by default: The Trump administration could flip the government’s position or rescind the regulation, which could moot the case.

FPC is also waiting to hear if the Supreme Court takes up its challenge to Maryland’s assault weapons ban. The group has again partnered with the Second Amendment Foundation, along with the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Even before its first Supreme Court case, FPC was influencing the justices.

When the court last June wiped out the federal ban on bump stocks—attachments that make semi-automatic rifles fire like machine guns—Justice Clarence Thomas included diagrams lifted straight from FPC Action Foundation’s brief supporting the ban’s elimination. Thomas also cited a law review article in the court’s 2022 Bruen decision that had been co-authored by Joseph Greenlee just before he joined FPC’s legal team.

Greenlee, who now leads the NRA Institute for Legislative Action’s Office of Litigation Counsel, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In a statement, the institute’s executive director, John Commerford, said it’s proud to partner with “like-minded allies” including FPC.

“NRA and FPC have collaborated on recent lawsuits targeting Pennsylvania’s ban on concealed carry by 18-to-20-year-olds and California’s excise tax on firearm and ammunition sales,” he said.

Combs insists the organization he leads isn’t an extension of either political party. When Trump first took office, the coalition saw contributions drop, ostensibly because of optimism that the new administration would resolve Second Amendment issues once and for all.

That didn’t happen. Instead, gun rights advocates assailed Trump for banning bump stocks after a gunman used them to increase the firepower on his semiautomatic rifles and kill 60 people at a 2017 Las Vegas concert. The following year, FPC challenged the federal ban. It was ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court in another case.

“A lot of people in our world that supported President Trump said, ‘Hey, you’re doing it wrong. You’re attacking the wrong guy,’” said Combs. “We said, ‘No, we have to be principled, we have to be consistent, and we can’t let this go.’”

How new Republican control of Congress and the White House will affect the organization and its mission is unclear. To Combs, the biggest impact a second Trump administration could have would be on its choice of judges.

He wants more jurists with an originalist perspective, interpreting the Constitution based on its meaning at the time it was written. Until then, FPC plans to keep filing suits and firing off tweets.

“You know what I want to do? I want to win and go home,” Combs said.