Move over Ryan Busse. David Chipman, shuffle on down. Mike “The Gun Guy” Weisser – time to make more room on the bench. Everytown for Gun Safety has their newest poster boy.

Meet Greg Lickenbrock. He’s the latest in a string of “I’m a gun owner, but…” shills for gun control. Turns out that selling out your Second Amendment principles for billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s money is more lucrative than actually standing up for what you believe.

Lickenbrock might not be a household name in the firearm-owning community. Chances are, though, many have read his work. He’s the author of “Safe Gun Ownership for Dummies,” and spent nearly 10 years as editor for two publishers dedicated to guns, gun ownership, hunting and an outdoor lifestyle.

He cashed it all in to pitch gun control for Everytown. His latest venture was as a key witness to urge Colorado’s legislature to ban all semiautomatic firearms that can accept a detachable magazine. That is Senate Bill 3. That’s right. He wants to ban every Modern Sporting Rifle (MSR), traditional rifles, shotguns and pistols that accept detachable magazines. He pitches it as a minor inconvenience to gun owners and not a total ban.

“One of the reasons these weapons are so effective on the battlefield and so devastating in mass shootings is because shooters can reload quickly,” Lickenbrock testified. “By forcing an attacker to pause to reload, victims may have a chance to escape.”

That’s interesting phrasing because this bill only affects those who obey the law. Put another way, it forces a victim attempting to defend him or herself to pause to reload and the attacker has a chance to murder.

Bad Policy

For a guy supposedly dedicated to safety, that’s a pretty dumb idea. He’d rather push a gun control narrative instead of advocating for true gun safety. After all, the safest way to clear – or render any semiautomatic firearm “safe” – is to drop the magazine and empty the chamber. If Lickenbrock and the bill’s authors get their way, Coloradans would only be able to buy semiauto guns that have to be cycled through the action before it could be made safe. Say goodbye the same Browning BAR that your grandfather bought in the 1950s because it has a detachable magazine. Worse, this type of design wouldn’t allow gun owners to attach a simple cable-style locking device, the most common lock that firearm manufacturers include in the box when a firearm is shipped from the factory.

But Lickenbrock presents himself as a firearm “expert.” That’s dubious. He was testifying about the process of clearing a jammed firearm when he dropped this insanity.

“But let’s say you have a worse malfunction, most magazines today have a removable base plate,” Lickenbrock explained. “You simply take that off and everything in the magazine will drop out of the gun and you’ve cleared the malfunction and it’s a very helpful way to clean the gun.”

Actually, that’s not true at all. What someone has is a pile of cartridges scattered at their feet and potentially a cartridge still jammed in the chamber. Lickenbrock isn’t a firearm expert. He’s no battlefield expert, either. He’s never served a day in uniform. What he is – is dangerous.

So far, Lickenbrock is getting his way. A Colorado Senate committee advanced this ill-conceived Senate Bill 3 after nine hours of debate in a 3-2 vote. That bill would ban the manufacture, distribution, transfer, sale or purchase of a “specified semiautomatic firearm,” including all of those firearms previously mentioned.

Gun Control’s ‘Gun Guy’

Lickenbrock wasn’t always this way. For nearly 10 years, he thought the most commonly-owned, commonly-possessed semiautomatic rifle in America – the MSR or AR-15-style rifle – was just fine for law-abiding citizens. In case Lickenbrock hasn’t been paying close attention lately, there are over 30.7 million of these rifles in circulation today. That’s more common than there are Ford F-150s on the road today – the most-popular selling pickup truck in America.

But he challenged that too.

“You will hear people today claim that there are, let’s say, 30 million semiautomatic rifles in circulation,” Lickenbrock answered when asked if MSRs are commonly-owned and commonly-possessed. “The group that puts that out has never shown their math on that number.”

Ummmm… wait a second. That group is us, the NSSF. We do show our math. It’s simple addition. We show the chart. The numbers are derived from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive’s (ATF) own manufacturing reports. Lickenbrock isn’t just dangerous. He’s a liar, too.

Lickenbrock was cool with MSRs before he was paid to believe they were “icky.” In addition to editing firearm magazines that prominently feature MSRs – the same ones he now wants to ban – he weighed in on his preference of firearm in a column titled, “The Ultimate Zombie Apocalypse Gun & Weapon Guide.” His choice – you guessed it – is the MSR. This is an excerpt from an Oct. 27, 2017, edition of Tactical Life:

Greg Lickenbrock (Production Editor)

Lewis Machine & Tool CSW

I live in Atlanta—ground zero for “The Walking Dead”—so I’d need something to help me get to the countryside immediately without getting handcuffed to a rooftop pipe. I’d pick the CSW from Lewis Machine & Tool because it’s integrally suppressed and easy to maneuver with. I’m assuming I’d have a backpack full of 300 Blackout magazines at this point, but I’d honestly make sure I only had to shoot if necessary. My Jeep would do most of the work for me. And after I made it to greener pastures, I’d switch to a suppressed bolt action.

For those not familiar with LMT’s CSW, that stands for Confined Space Weapon. It is an MSR – the AR-15-style rifle that Bloomberg’s Everytown wants to ban. It takes those detachable magazines that Lickenbrock had no issue possessing when it came to his zombie bugout fantasy but doesn’t want Coloradans to possess in real life. It’s also integrally suppressed and a short-barrel rifle (SBR), meaning it requires a National Firearms Act (NFA) tax stamp to possess.

Full Bore Gun Control

These days, Lickenbrock’s apparently disavowed any idea that law-abiding citizens should own these types of firearms. In fact, he’s not just a paid Senior Firearms Analyst for Everytown for Gun Safety, he’s also an author on their online publication, The Smoking Gun. That’s where he gets paid to smear gun owners and the firearm industry, attacking .22 caliber MSRs and smearing SHOT Show.

When he’s not doing that, he’s the darling of the left by being a witness in Everytown’s frivolous lawsuits. He testified in Chicago v. Westforth Sports, the lawsuit that attempted to blame a licensed firearm retailer for criminals illegally straw purchasing firearms that were later recovered in Chicago. The city blamed the gun store for the actions of the criminals committing the crimes. Lickenbrock was happy to go along with the charade. For his part, he testified that he believed Westforth Sports sold as many as five firearms to Illinois residents that had a part made of zinc alloy with a melting point below 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Chicago’s frivolous lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.

Lickenbrock’s utility as a “gun guy for gun control” doesn’t end there. He testified in Vermont in April 2024, to scare state lawmakers into supporting S. 209, a bill banning privately-made firearms without a serial number, or as he’d refer to them as “ghost guns.” Never mind that it’s been legal to make your own firearm for your own use in America since before America became America. And never mind that the bill didn’t go after criminals misusing firearms. It only targets law-abiding gun owners.

“In other words, none of S.209’s provisions are particularly burdensome,” he testified. “I say that as a gun owner who has gone through the background check process numerous times.”

See that part? “As a gun owner…” Some call that a “useful idiot.” That bill passed into law without the governor’s signature.

His latest was testifying in Colorado to ban the same rifles he’s written about, shot and presumably possesses.

Even his book promoting safe gun storage was panned as dubious. It’s #288,587 on the Amazon best seller list and earns a 2.7-star rating, with 58 percent of those only getting one star. The first review is telling.

I honestly thought that I was reading satire for the first 15 minutes or so, that’s how surreal it is.

Not only is the author not an expert, he’s less knowledgeable regarding firearms that many of the novice shooters that I know. This is nothing but anti-gun propaganda dressed up as a “guide”, and is full of incorrect information that will get you thrown in prison or killed. Buy something else. 

That’s not the only one. Another started, “If you’re looking for a book full of outright lies and half-truths about guns, this is your book. It took me longer than I’m proud to admit to realize that it was not satire.” And another begins, “This guy doesn’t have very much knowledge on firearms. He is anti 2A and makes some outrageous claims against people that are in the 2A space.”

The picture paints itself. So does this charade. Lickenbrock added in his testimony that the Colorado bill’s requirements aren’t a burden, and the modification could be achieved by manufacturers using an “epoxy-weld” to permanently fix magazines to a receiver. He even said that if police needed to verify if a firearm was compliant, it wouldn’t be an inconvenience to the lawful gun owner.

“There may be cases where they [police] have to fire the gun to see if it’s semiautomatic,” Lickenbrock testified. “They may need to take it to a range to tug on that magazine but I really don’t think it would be that much of a burden.”

Except that having your firearm seized and held and your Constitutional rights deprived is a burden.

Lickenbrock isn’t an expert on anything. He’s gun control’s convenient fool.

—Courtesy of NSSF