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If youve heard of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, mixed-martial arts or the UFC, the reason is Royce Gracie. In the early 1990s, his dominance of the octagon brought his familys style of jiu-jitsu into the American mainstream, and the martial art has become immensely popular around the world ever since. In addition to his hand-to-hand combat skills, Gracie is also a fan of firearms and the Second Amendment. Editor-in-Chief Ed Friedman sat down with Gracie to discuss his career, his love of freedom and his interest in guns.

SI: How did you get interested in firearms?

Royce Gracie: Growing up in Brazil, my dad had a few guns on our farm. Its part of martial arts. Sure, they say its empty hands, but so many styles use weapons, so its part of the martial arts culture. When I came to America and saw the freedom that we have, I was blown away. Back in the early days, we had a friend who would take us to the range, and wed shoot 100 rounds through a .45 ACP 1911. Our goal was to make the bullseye disappear, and I got the shooting bug. Shooting is an art. You need to know what youre doing, how to be safe, to recognize the skill needed to control that power. Its a lot like martial arts in that way.

SI: What makes someone who is so skilled in unarmed self-defense feel the need to own firearms?

Royce Gracie: What if theres more than one person? What if the adversary is armed? If its just one guy whos not armed, yeah, I can take care of him. But what if he pulls a gun? What if theres more than one attacker and they have knives? What happens if theres a terrorist attack? Ive got a mentality that Im going to try to stop an attack no matter what, but if hes got a gun, thats suicidal if Im not armed. Also, if a criminal is attacking other people, its not always feasible for even someone with my skills to stop that attack without a firearm.

Attackers arent going to make it a fair fight. They launch surprise assaults; they try to take you out to get to your family or your property. Its not the octagon. Theres no referee. And if he pulls a weapon, hes not just trying to fight mehes trying to kill me. At that point, youd be crazy to try to go hand to hand. I have a gun to defend myself if the situation escalates like that.

SI: Tell me a little about the situation in Brazil as it pertains to gun ownership and crime.

Royce Gracie: Brazil never had the degree of freedom we have in the U.S., but you used to be able to buy some guns. There were restrictions, but there were shops we could go to. Then, they essentially banned civilian ownership guns in what they said was an effort to fight crime. That resulted in the criminals arming themselves to the teeth. I mean, they had RPGs and machine guns. They get it from corrupt officials. Violence got out of control after that. It was like the law switched to protect the bad guys. So at the same time they disarmed the law-abiding citizens, they made life easier on the criminals. The murder rate went through the roof. Its so bad, the prisoners in jails get better food than the police!

SI: Why do people sign up for your classes? What is it about Brazilian jiu-jitsu that is so popular?

Royce Gracie: The main reason people go to any martial arts school is to gain confidence by learning skills. They may have had something happen to them or seen a situation that they didnt know how to react to. That stays with themthey dont go right away to learn about self-defense, but that thought stays filed away. Then one day a friend will say Hey, Im learning this martial art; lets go check it out. Then they go to class and start to get the hang of it. Its a lot of the same reasons why people buy a gun for the first time. People realize theyre vulnerable, but it often takes a while. Its not like they see a fight and say, I need to learn a martial art, but a while later that thought comes to the front and they sign up for a class. Its really all about the skills you need to be confident. Parents sign their kids up for the same reason; for the confidence that can come with the discipline that martial arts provide.

SI: What can people expect to learn in a Royce Gracie-taught class?

Royce Gracie: I teach them self-defense. I dont teach competition. Martial arts were made to defend yourself. A lot of schools teach you how to score points, but thats not real life. Competition can ruin a martial art. I teach how to defend yourself in a street-fight situation. Why do you buy a gun? Sure, there are a small number of people who want to be the best competitive shooter in the world, but for most of us, its for self-defense. And maybe that leads to competition, which is fine, but thats not why you signed up for a martial arts class or why you bought that first gun.

SI: What drew you to the NRA? How important is the Second Amendment to you?

Royce Gracie: The National Rifle Association is the front line of keeping my right to keep and bear arms. Thats the way I look at it. I really respect the NRA, because I know from experience, from what happened to Brazil, how important the Second Amendment is. It is my right to defend myself, and the NRA makes sure that right will be there. Look what happened when they took those rights away in Brazil, in Venezuelait is vital to keep that right.

Want to take a class with Royce Gracie? Visit NRACarryGuardExpo.com today to sign up for the (limited-space) Brazilian jiu-jitsu class he will teach at the inaugural Carry Guard Expo in Milwaukee, WI, Aug. 25 to 27. Gracie will teach paying attendees several moves that could come in handy should you find yourself in a close-quarters criminal attack. He will also be signing autographs at the show. In addition, there will be seminars from world-class instructors like Steve Tarani, Travis Doc T and many others, so you wont want to miss the best event for those interested in self-defense.

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MMA Legend Royce Gracie on the Second Amendment - Shooting Illustrated (press release) (blog)

When a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided an important gun rights case last week, some advocates were already thinking ahead.

Clark Neily of the Cato Institute told my colleague Ann E. Marimow that the 2-to-1 ruling against the Districts requirement of a good reason to obtain a permit to carry a gun in public was thoroughly researched and carefully reasoned.

[Appeals court blocks D.C.s concealed carry law]

It would make an ideal vehicle for the Supreme Court to finally decide whether the Second Amendment applies outside the home, Neily said.

As if.

The fact is the justices have shown a remarkable lack of interest in deciding that issue, or in expanding upon their landmark 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. They have had multiple chances to define with specificity what the Second Amendment protects beyond Hellers guarantee of individual gun ownership in ones home, and they have declined each opportunity.

Just last month, the court decided to stay out of a similar case from California, where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit decided that the Second Amendment does not protect the right to carry a concealed weapon in public.

[Supreme Court declines to review California concealed-carry law]

Declining to even review the ruling brought an impatient rebuke from Justice Clarence Thomas.

It reflects a distressing trend: the treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right, wrote Thomas, who was joined by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.

Thomas said he found the 9th Circuits ruling indefensible.

But even if other members of the court do not agree that the Second Amendment likely protects a right to public carry, the time has come for the court to answer this important question definitively. Twenty-six states have asked us to resolve the question presented, he wrote.

Circuit Judge Thomas B. Griffith acknowledged the absence of clear direction at the beginning of his opinion last week on the D.C. permit procedure.

Constitutional challenges to gun laws create peculiar puzzles for courts, he wrote, because they require balancing the highest goal of government protecting innocent lives against individual rights bestowed by the Constitution.

The Supreme Court, he observed, has offered little guidance.

The courts first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment is younger than the first iPhone, Griffith wrote. And by its own admission, that first treatment manages to be mute on how to review gun laws in a range of other cases.

By listening closely to what the court had to say in Heller, Griffith and Judge Stephen F. Williams blocked the Districts law as a violation of a core Second Amendment protection.

The law requires those seeking a permit to carry a concealed firearm to show that they have good reason to fear injury or a proper reason, such as transporting valuables. Living in a high-crime area shall not by itself qualify as a good reason.

As of July 15, D.C. police had approved 126 concealed-carry licenses and denied 417 applicants.

Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson came up with a very different interpretation from her colleagues. Heller blessed the Districts regulation, she wrote, because of the citys unique security challenges as the nations capital and because the permit process does not affect the right to keep a firearm at home.

The sole Second Amendment core right is the right to possess arms for self-defense in the home, Henderson wrote.

She added that by characterizing the Second Amendment right as most notable and most acute in the home, the Supreme Court necessarily implied that that right is less notable and less acute outside the home.

She noted that her colleagues had put on blinders to the historical analyses of the D.C. Circuits sister circuits: All who have considered the issue concluded that restrictive state regulations on carry permits are constitutional.

There arent many states with such stringent requirements Maryland, New Jersey and New York are among them. They are outliers, said attorney Alan Gura, a go-to Second Amendment lawyer who successfully argued Heller at the Supreme Court and the D.C. case, Wrenn v. District of Columbia, as 44 states allow citizens to claim their rights.

As is its custom, the Supreme Court has not given reasons when it declined to review the lower court decisions upholding the state restrictions. That unanimity, though, could be one reason the Supreme Court has not gotten involved.

The court most often steps in when there is a conflict in the lower courts. The D.C. Circuits panel decision creates that for now.

The city has not decided on its next legal move, but it seems likely to ask the full D.C. Circuit to review the panels decision. As David Kopel, a University of Denver law professor and gun rights activist notes, when Heller was decided in that court a decade ago, the full circuit declined to review and overturn the panels groundbreaking endorsement of an individual right to gun ownership.

But the court has changed dramatically since then. It is more liberal now, with a majority of judges appointed by Democratic presidents.

If the full D.C. Circuit joined its sister circuits in upholding the good reason requirement, gun rights activists would be back to the Supreme Court, again asking for review.

As Thomass dissent indicates, there is some division on the court on the matter, and reasons for why the justices have not stepped in are a matter of speculation.

Perhaps a solid majority agrees the lower courts have read Heller correctly and that it leaves space for jurisdictions to impose stringent requirements for carrying a gun outside the home.

Or perhaps the court remains closely divided Heller was decided on a 5-to-4 vote and the justices simply have little appetite for tackling the controversial matter of guns in the absence of a lower court disagreement that would force their hands.

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D.C. gun ruling again raises an issue the Supreme Court has been ... - Washington Post

Its happened again. Police officers in Southaven, Miss., were trying to serve an arrest warrant for aggravated assault on a man named Samuel Pearman, but instead they showed up at a trailer owned by an auto mechanic named Ismael Lopez. It was nighttime, and according to his wife, Lopez went to the door to investigate a noise. She stayed in bed.

What happened next was tragic. According to the police, Lopez opened his door and a pit bull charged out. One officer opened fire on the dog, the other officer fired on the man allegedly holding a gun in the doorway, pointing it at the men approaching his home. As the Washington Post reported on July 26, it was only after the smoke cleared that the officers made their heart-dropping discovery: They were at the wrong home.

Lopez died that night. Just like Andrew Scott died in his entrance hall, gun in hand, when the police pounded on the wrong door late one night, Scott opened it, saw shadowy figures outside, and started to retreat back into his house. Police opened fire, and he died in seconds.

Angel Mendez was more fortunate. He only lost his leg when the police barged into his home without a warrant and without announcing themselves. They saw his BB gun and opened fire, inflicting grievous wounds.

If past precedent holds, its likely that the officers who killed Ismael Lopez will be treated exactly like the officers in the Scott and Mendez cases. They wont be prosecuted for crimes, and theyll probably even be immune from civil suit, with the court following precedents holding that the officers didnt violate Lopezs clearly established constitutional rights when they approached the wrong house. After all, officers have their own rights of self-defense. What, exactly, are they supposed to do when a gun is pointed at their face?

In other words, the law typically allows officers to shoot innocent homeowners who are lawfully exercising their Second Amendment rights and then provides these same innocent victims with no compensation for the deaths and injuries that result. This is unacceptable, its unjust, and it undermines the Second Amendment.

Think where this leaves homeowners who hear strange sounds or who confront pounding on the door. Should they risk their safety by leaving their gun in the safe while they check to make sure its not the police? Should they risk their lives by bringing the gun to the door, knowing that the police may not announce themselves and may simply be trying to barge into the wrong home? Doesnt the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure include a right to be free of armed, mistaken, warrantless, home intrusions?

Its time for the law to accommodate the Second Amendment. Its time for legal doctrine to reflect that when the state intrudes in the wrong home or lawlessly or recklessly even into the right home that it absolutely bears the costs of its own mistakes. Its time for law enforcement practice to reflect the reality that tens of millions of law-abiding men and women exercise their fundamental, constitutional rights to protect themselves and their families.

What does this mean, in practice? First, extraordinarily dangerous and kinetic no-knock raids should be used only in the most extreme circumstances. Writers such as Radley Balko have written extensively about the prevalence of the practice (even in routine drug busts), the dangers inherent in dynamic entry, and the sad and terrible circumstances where the police find themselves in a gunfight with terrified homeowners.

Second, prosecutors should closely scrutinize every single instance of mistaken-identity raids. Good-faith mistakes are always possible, but given the stakes involved when police raid homes or pound on doors late at night with their guns drawn, they should exercise a high degree of care and caution in choosing the right house. Its hard to imagine a worse or more tragic injustice than being gunned down in your own home by mistaken agents of the state.

Third, if and when police do kill or injure innocent homeowners, they should be stripped of qualified immunity even when the homeowner is armed. There are circumstances where it would improper to file criminal charges against an officer who makes a good-faith mistake and finds himself making an immediate life-or-death situation, but when the mistake is his, then he should face strict liability for all the harm he causes.

As the law now stands, police are not only rarely prosecuted when they violate the Fourth and Second Amendment rights of innocent homeowners by gunning them down in their own home, its often difficult even to impose civil liability. Innocent men and women are left with no recourse, and officers remain immune from judicial accountability for their own, tragic mistakes.

Last year a Minnesota police officer shot a lawfully armed Philando Castile during a traffic stop despite the fact that Castile was precisely following the officers commands. The officers acquittal unquestionably undermined the Second Amendment, but such shootings are mercifully rare. More common are the panicked, confused moments late at night or early in the morning when a homeowner hears shouts at his door, or someone breaks it down, and all he knows is that armed men are in his house. In those moments, a persons rights of self-defense are at their unquestioned apex. Its the states responsibility to protect those rights, not snuff out a life and escape all legal consequence.

READ MORE: Another Federal Court of Appeals Attacks the Second Amendment The Need for Smarter Second Amendment Jurisprudence The Real Reason Officers Are Rarely Convicted of Shooting Suspects

David French is a senior writer for National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and an attorney.

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It's Time to Deal with the Police Threat to the Second Amendment - National Review

Second Amendment rights must be preserved The Second Amendment is needed more today than at any other time in history.

As the military, A well-regulated Militia, grows in size, the more the rights of the people to bear arms must be protected. The same is true as the size of law enforcement grows, the rights of the people to bear arms must be protected.

The Second Amendment is necessary, if not more so, today than when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution. It does not need changing or tweaking in any manner. What it needs is to be applied as written.

We cannot totally leave our security, the defense of our families and the defense of our property to law enforcement officers. We must be self-reliant enough to protect ourselves, our family and our property from those who would cause us harm or try to take our property.

Those who believe citizens right to bear arms should be curtailed or eliminated in any manner should do a bit of research first on violent crime and then on what happens when arms are taken away from the citizens of a country.

As gun ownership decreases or arms are confiscated, violent crime rates increase. Yes, violent crimes involving guns decrease, but violent crime by other means increase so much that the overall violent crime rate increases. This is true as well within cities that have curtailed arms ownership. Chicago is a prime example!

Germany confiscated arms at the beginning of World War II. The Nazis then killed millions of citizens. When China confiscated arms, China then went on to kill millions. These are just two examples of what happens when the citizens lose the right to bear arms.

I spent 20 years in the military. I am also a big fan and supporter of law enforcement. We need both a strong military and effective law enforcement force. But these two cannot do it alone; they need the help of the citizens and that means that the citizens should be free to bear arms in support of law enforcement and the military to protect their families and property!

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Second Amendment rights must be preserved - The Wilson Times (subscription)

Washington Post

Mo Brooks: 'Second Amendment' | Campaign 2018 Washington Post July 24, 2017 1:14 PM EDT - Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who is running for Alabama's Senate seat in a special election primary on Aug. 15, released a campaign video invoking the GOP baseball practice shooting in June. (Mo Brooks for Senate) ...

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Mo Brooks: 'Second Amendment' | Campaign 2018 - Washington Post