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Americans for Chemical Liberty

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED."

THE SECOND AMENDMENT SAYS NOTHING ABOUT MOLECULAR WEIGHT

They Gave You Pepper Spray. They Kept the Nerve Agents.

Pepper spray is a chemical weapon. This is not a metaphor. It is a chemical — oleoresin capsicum — dispersed as an aerosol to incapacitate a target. It is a weapon. It is made of chemicals. Therefore it is, by any definition, a chemical weapon. It is also completely legal. You can buy it at Walmart. You can carry it in your purse. No background check. No waiting period. No federal registration. The government has no objection whatsoever to you possessing this particular chemical weapon.

Tear gas — CS gas, CN gas — is also a chemical weapon. It causes respiratory distress, burning skin, temporary blindness. It incapacitates. It controls. It's also legal. Police departments across this country spray it on crowds, protesters, and yes — American citizens — on a routine basis. Your local police department has a stockpile of chemical weapons right now. Your city approved the purchase. Your tax dollars paid for it.

Now. The United States government maintains stockpiles of VX nerve agent. Sarin. Mustard gas. GB. Lewisite. These are stored at EIGHT CHEMICAL WEAPONS STOCKPILE SITES across the country — Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Utah, Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas, Anniston Army Depot in Alabama, Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky, Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant in Colorado, and others. The U.S. government has LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF TONS of chemical agents sitting in storage.

You have pepper spray.

Someone drew a line between "legal chemical weapon" and "illegal chemical weapon." Someone decided that oleoresin capsicum is fine and VX is not. Someone made that call. And that someone was NOT James Madison. That someone was NOT any Founder. That someone was a BUREAUCRAT. A committee. A treaty negotiation with other governments. And you — a free American citizen — were never asked.

The Chemical Weapons Convention is a TREATY BETWEEN NATIONS. Steve Hendricks is not a nation. He is a CITIZEN. The Geneva Protocol is an agreement between GOVERNMENTS. Steve Hendricks is not a government. He is a taxpayer. These international instruments are binding on the United States of America as a sovereign entity — they say NOTHING about what individual citizens of those nations may or may not possess.

The government signed a treaty limiting it's own weapons programs and then used that treaty as justification to tell YOU what you can have in YOUR house. That is not how any of this is supposed to work.

The Chemical Parity Gap

THE STATE HAS: YOU HAVE:
VX nerve agent (persistent, skin-contact lethal)Pepper spray (clears up in 20 minutes)
Sarin (GB) — 500x more toxic than cyanideBear spray (works on bears)
Mustard gas (HD) — causes chemical burns, blindnessWasp spray (for wasps)
Lewisite (blister agent, arsenic-based)Mace (technically also illegal in some states)
CS tear gas, delivered by helicopter if desiredPersonal-size CS canister, confiscated on sight
Novichok precursor research programsA strongly worded letter to your congressman

This is not a gap. This is a CANYON. And somebody dug it on purpose.

The Question Nobody Will Answer

Here is the question I have been asking since 2024 and nobody — not one person, not one congressman, not one constitutional scholar on the other side — has given me a straight answer to:

WHO DECIDED WHICH CHEMICALS ARE LEGAL — AND WHY DO THEY GET TO DECIDE FOR ME?

Pepper spray: legal. Made from capsaicin. It's a chemical. It incapacitates. It's a weapon. Legal.
Tear gas: banned in WARFARE under the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Legal for police to use on American citizens in the streets. Let that sink in. The United States government agreed that tear gas is too inhumane to use against ENEMY SOLDIERS in wartime — and then turns around and uses it on it's own people at protests, demonstrations, and civil disturbances. The government uses chemical weapons on it's own population that it refuses to use on it's enemies. And YOU can't have any for SELF-DEFENSE.

The Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act (18 U.S.C. § 229) makes it a federal crime for a civilian to possess a chemical weapon. Penalty: up to life imprisonment. Now here's what the law actually says: a "chemical weapon" is defined as a toxic chemical and its precursors, except where intended for purposes not prohibited. "Purposes not prohibited" include law enforcement. The police get a carve-out. Government officials get a carve-out. You do not get a carve-out. This is not a safety regulation. This is a MONOPOLY.

Let's go back to first principles. The Second Amendment exists — per Madison, per Hamilton, per every Federalist Paper that addresses it — so that the citizens can check the power of the state. The Founders had just fought a war against a government that used its military advantage to suppress the population. Their solution was to ensure the population remained armed enough to make such suppression impossible, or at least costly. That is not my interpretation. That is the TEXT.

Now. If the purpose of the Second Amendment is to ensure parity between citizen and state — and it is — then the citizen must have access to the same categories of weapons the state employs. The state employs chemical weapons. The state has employed chemical weapons against it's own citizens. The state maintains chemical weapons stockpiles as a deterrent and as a military option. The state has written laws that specifically exempt itself from the rules it imposes on citizens regarding chemical weapons.

Tell me again how the Second Amendment is fulfilled by a 1.5-ounce can of OC spray.

"The state will gas you in the street and call it law enforcement. You spray back and it's a federal felony. The only difference is the badge."

— Steve Hendricks, Americans for Chemical Liberty

Some people say: "Steve, chemical weapons are DIFFERENT. They're INDISCRIMINATE. They cause SUFFERING." And to those people I say: have you SEEN what a hollow-point does to a human body? Have you looked at the stopping power tables for .357 Magnum? The Second Amendment does not require your preferred weapons to be HUMANE. It requires the government to keep it's hands off them. Suffering is not a disqualifier — if it were, we'd have banned the entire firearms industry already. We haven't. Because the Founders understood that the alternative to an armed citizenry is a citizenry at the mercy of whoever IS armed. That has always been the trade. Chemical weapons are just the next logical step.

And before you say it — yes, I know about the international obligations. The Chemical Weapons Convention. The Biological Weapons Convention. The Geneva Protocols. Let me be very clear about what these instruments are: they are AGREEMENTS between GOVERNMENTS about what GOVERNMENTS will and will not do to EACH OTHER. Steve Hendricks did not sign the Chemical Weapons Convention. No American citizen did. The State Department signed it. The executive branch signed it on behalf of the United States as a sovereign entity. Those obligations run to OTHER NATIONS. They do not — they CANNOT, under our constitutional system — override the individual rights of American citizens. A treaty does not amend the Bill of Rights. That is settled law. That is Reid v. Covert, 1957, Supreme Court of the United States.

The government signed a deal with other governments, and then told you the deal limits YOUR rights. That is not how treaties work. That is not how the Constitution works. That is how TYRANNY works.

A treaty between nations is not a gag order on citizens. The Founders weren't confused about the difference.

The Facts They Hope You Never Connect

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The United States has been destroying its declared chemical weapons stockpile under the Chemical Weapons Convention, but the process has taken DECADES and cost billions of dollars. The U.S. declared approximately 30,000 tons of chemical agents when it signed the CWC in 1997. As of 2023, the declared stockpile destruction was completed — but that's the DECLARED stockpile. The point is: thirty thousand tons. Citizens have pepper spray. Nobody called this a parity problem until now.

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Tear gas (CS, CN, and OC formulations) is prohibited as a method of warfare under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention and the 1925 Geneva Protocol. This means the United States military CANNOT USE TEAR GAS against enemy combatants in armed conflict. It is, by international agreement, too inhumane for use against enemy soldiers. Police departments use it on American citizens regularly. The standard applied to enemy soldiers in wartime is higher than the standard applied to you walking to your car on a Tuesday.

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Under 18 U.S.C. § 229, "chemical weapon" includes any toxic chemical intended for use against humans in a manner not consistent with "purposes not prohibited." Law enforcement activities are explicitly carved out as "purposes not prohibited." So: the government possessing and using CS gas on citizens = legal. You possessing CS gas in an amount beyond personal defense = potentially federal crime territory. The carve-out runs to the badge, not to the person. ONE LAW FOR THEM. ANOTHER FOR YOU.

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Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Utah. Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas. Anniston Army Depot in Alabama. Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky. Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant in Colorado. Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System in the Pacific. These are the known sites where the U.S. government STORED ITS DECLARED CHEMICAL WEAPONS STOCKPILE. The people living near these facilities were not asked if they consented to having nerve agent stored next door. But the government is very concerned about what's in YOUR garage.

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VX nerve agent — the most toxic chemical weapon ever produced — is a Schedule 1 substance under the CWC and a prohibited weapon under 18 U.S.C. § 229. It was PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES at the Newport Chemical Agent Plant in Indiana and stored at multiple Army depots. The government manufactured it. The government stockpiled it. The government spent billions destroying it. You possessing one microgram of it is a federal crime carrying life imprisonment. The people who manufactured thousands of tons of it: government employees with pensions.

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The Federalist Papers are clear on why the Second Amendment exists. Madison, in Federalist No. 46, described Americans as possessing "the advantage of being armed" and said this made tyranny impossible — unlike in European kingdoms "where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." He was describing a structural check on government power. He was describing parity. If Madison were writing today, he would look at the chemical weapons gap and say EXACTLY WHAT WE ARE SAYING. The principle has not changed. Only the weapons have.

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The "line" between legal and illegal chemicals is drawn by the ATF, the EPA, and the CWC schedules. Schedule 1 chemicals (sarin, VX, mustard gas, lewisite, etc.) are prohibited for civilian possession. Schedule 2 and 3 chemicals are precursor-controlled. The schedules were determined by international negotiation and bureaucratic classification — not by a constitutional amendment, not by a vote of the people, and not by any reading of the Second Amendment. A SCHEDULING COMMITTEE decided your rights. Not the Founders. A committee.

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Chlorine gas was used as a weapon in World War I. It is also used in municipal water treatment. Every city in America chlorinates its water supply. The government pipes a chemical weapon precursor directly into your house and charges you for it. You use it to do laundry. If you were to concentrate it and deploy it as a weapon, you would be a federal criminal. The government does this in your tap water as a public health service. The line between "chemical" and "chemical weapon" is not chemistry. It is POLITICS.

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Reid v. Covert (1957): The Supreme Court held that no treaty or international agreement can override the constitutional rights of American citizens. Treaties bind the United States government in its dealings with other nations — they do not and cannot abridge the individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution. The Chemical Weapons Convention binds the U.S. government. It does not bind STEVE HENDRICKS. These are different legal categories. The government counts on you not knowing that.

"It's not a chemistry problem. It's a rights problem. The molecule isn't political. The bureaucrat who scheduled it is."

— Steve Hendricks, Executive Director, Americans for Chemical Liberty

What We Demand

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Repeal of 18 U.S.C. § 229 as applied to individual citizens and replace it with an NFA-style registration and licensing framework. Pay a tax. Submit to a background check. Store safely. We follow the rules — we want rules that APPLY EQUALLY regardless of whether you have a badge.

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Elimination of the law enforcement carve-out in the CWC Implementation Act. If tear gas is too inhumane for use in warfare, it is too inhumane for use on citizens. One standard. Applied equally. To everyone. Including the people with the tanks and the helicopters and the pepper ball launchers.

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Congressional recognition that the Chemical Weapons Convention binds the U.S. government in its international obligations and does NOT — per Reid v. Covert and settled constitutional law — override the individual rights of American citizens under the Second Amendment.

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Full public accounting of all chemical agents held at federal facilities — past stockpiles, current research programs, and any Schedule 1, 2, or 3 materials in government possession. If the government is going to tell citizens they can't have one canister, the government can tell citizens exactly what's in their forty warehouses.

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Parity protections: any chemical agent used by any U.S. law enforcement agency or military branch against American citizens must be made available for civilian purchase within 90 days of any such use. If it's legal to use on us, it's legal for us to have. Same chemicals. Same rules. Same country.

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Recognition that defensive chemical capability is constitutionally protected. If the government has nerve agents and will use them against citizens in extreme circumstances, then citizens have a Second Amendment right to chemical defensive capability. Self-defense is self-defense. The delivery mechanism doesn't change the principle.

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An end to the legal fiction that pepper spray and tear gas are not "chemical weapons" when possessed by citizens but BECOME chemical weapons the moment the citizen tries to acquire anything more effective. Either chemicals are weapons or they aren't. The government does not get to run both sides of that argument.

"The government will gas you in the street and call it riot control. They will gas you in your house and call it a drug raid. They will gas an entire apartment building and call it a police action. And they have the unbelievable audacity to look you in the eye and tell you that you can't have ONE CANISTER of anything stronger than what you can buy at a sporting goods store. I have read the Second Amendment fourteen hundred times. I cannot find the part where it says 'except molecules.'"

— Steve Hendricks

Your Body. Your Rights. Their Gas.

Every argument the other side makes against chemical parity, they have already disproved with their own behavior. They say chemical weapons are "indiscriminate." The government uses them in crowds — that IS indiscriminate. They say chemical weapons cause "unnecessary suffering." The government deploys them against protesters in the streets — those protesters are suffering unnecessarily. They say chemical weapons are "too dangerous for civilians to possess." The government stores thirty thousand tons of them within driving distance of millions of civilians. Every argument they make against YOUR access is an argument they have already answered — in the affirmative — for THEMSELVES.

I am not asking to manufacture nerve agents in my garage. I am not asking to weaponize chlorine in my basement. I am asking for the same principled consistency that the Second Amendment DEMANDS: that citizens have access to the same categories of defensive capability that the state maintains for its own purposes. Not every individual weapon. Not the same quantities. The same CATEGORIES. The same PRINCIPLE. The same ACKNOWLEDGMENT that a citizen's right to defend himself does not disappear because the government decided to classify the relevant molecules.

They drew a line. In the air, essentially, since that's where the chemicals disperse. They drew it with a bureaucratic pen in a treaty negotiation in Geneva. And they pointed at that line and told you: this side is legal, that side is a federal felony. And they forgot to mention that they were standing on BOTH SIDES of that line the entire time. Tooele, Utah. Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The line runs right through the middle of their own inventory. They just don't let you see the map.

The Second Amendment does not distinguish between propellants, projectiles, and chemical agents. It says "arms." A chemical weapon is an arm. The Founders knew what chemistry was — they used it to make gunpowder, to cast cannon balls, to mix cartridges. They understood that weapons were made of matter, that matter has properties, and that the right to bear arms was not contingent on which particular properties of matter your preferred weapon exploited. Kinetic energy. Thermal energy. Chemical energy. All of it is arms. All of it is protected. The government has spent two hundred years trying to convince you otherwise. We're done being convinced.

☣️ "From My Cold, Breathing Hands" ☣️

— Steve Hendricks, Executive Director