Category: Courts

Remington offers $33 million to Sandy Hook families to settle lawsuits

This just in from Reuters: Remington has offered to pay $33 million to nine families to settle lawsuits that allege their marketing contributed to the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting that killed 26 people.

“The proposed settlements would provide $3.66 million to relatives of each victim, subject to approval by the federal judge overseeing Remington’s bankruptcy case in Alabama,” the wire service reported.

In a previous court filing, lawyers for the families estimated that the wrongful-death and punitive damages could exceed $1 billion.

“Since this case was filed in 2014, the families’ focus has been on preventing the next Sandy Hook,” an attorney for the families said in a statement. “An important part of that goal has been showing banks and insurers that companies that sell assault weapons to civilians are fraught with financial risk.”

Adam Lanza, who used a Remington Bushmaster rifle,  shot and killed 20 students and six adults after shooting his mother to death. Lanza killed himself when he heard sirens approaching.

Cruz and 24 Senate Republicans file amicus brief defending Second Amendment right to carry

Sen. Ted Cruz and two dozen Senate Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, filed an amicus brief Tuesday in a Second Amendment case the Supreme Court is set to hear this fall, arguing that New York gun law violates the right to bear arms under the Constitution.

Cruz and his GOP colleagues filed a brief in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which the Supreme Court granted cert for in April.

The high court, in its October 2021 term, is set to consider whether the Second Amendment allows the government to prohibit ordinary law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns outside the home for self-defense.

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[Kansas] AG Derek Schmidt to U.S. Supreme Court: Second Amendment rights extend outside the home

TOPEKA – (July 20, 2021) – The Second Amendment’s protection for the individual right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms applies outside a person’s residence, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt today told the U.S. Supreme Court.

Schmidt joined with 25 other state attorneys general in filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the justices to reverse a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit that upheld a New York law requiring law-abiding citizens to provide documentation of “proper cause” as to why they should permitted to carry a weapon for protection or other legal use outside the home.

The attorneys general said the New York law is in direct conflict with a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment includes the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear weapons in self-defense, including legally carrying such a weapon outside the home and across state lines. Laws similar to the New York system have been invalidated in several cases in recent years, including a Hawaii law struck down by the 9th Circuit in 2018.

Schmidt said the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the matter would provide clarity that the Second Amendment rights of Kansans and all law-abiding citizens to carry a weapon outside the home is constitutionally protected.

New York’s system for issuing permits runs contrary to Kansas and 41 other states that maintain a “shall issue” licensing regime based on objective criteria for granting a permit, which can include background checks, fingerprinting, and training in firearms handling and/or laws regarding use of force. The attorneys general argue in their brief that New York’s system creates a fundamental burden on citizens without advancing the objectives of public safety and crime prevention, leaving firearms in the hands of a select, chosen few who can demonstrate to the government a “special need.”

The amicus brief in N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., v. Bruencan be found at https://bit.ly/3znJSgZ.

 

Judge Refuses to Confiscate Defendant’s Guns Despite Prosecutor’s Request

WOODLAND, CA – Any of Trent Stonerock’s concerns about having his legally-owned firearms confiscated were alleviated here this week as Yolo County Superior Court Judge David W. Reed refused to confiscate them, despite Deputy District Attorney Alex Kian’s strenuous request.

Stonerock, who now resides in Ohio, was charged with a misdemeanor for resisting/obstructing a police officer for an August 2018 incident in which he had a physical altercation with his son.

The presence of Stonerock’s firearms, which were loaded, allegedly made the officers “concerned for their safety” as they dealt with the situation.

Kian proposed that Stonerock “surrender his firearms for a period of a year.” Kian wanted to make sure that Stonerock knows he’s “getting off with a diversion [of the misdemeanor charge],” and stressed that there must therefore be “some consequences as an incentive to comply.”

Kian suggested Stonerock “surrender [his firearms] to a licensed gun dealer in his state [Ohio].”

Further stressing public safety concerns, Kian asked that “drug terms be imposed,” which included frequent drug testing. He also added that “there’s claims of mental health issues and what not,” which increase public safety concerns.

Hendrick Crowell, Stonerock’s defense attorney, suggested vastly different conditions for his client than Kian did.

Crowell began by dispelling Kian’s concerns over Stonerock’s mental health and criticizing Kian’s suggestion to apply drug testing, stating that “this is a case from August of 2018, so he’s [Stonerock] been just about three years clean with no law violations, no calls for services, [and] no issues. He completed six sessions of private therapy.”

Crowell then addressed Kian’s request that the court confiscate Stonerock’s guns, arguing that “he’s [Stonerock] is a lawful gun owner. [The incident] was at his home… he was close to his guns, [and] there was a struggle over the police trying to secure the guns and the court granted the diversion request, and I think it’s more appropriate that he just do some community service.”

Crowell then specifically suggested that Stonerock do 40 hours of community service for the church in which he is a very “active” member.

However, Kian objected to Crowell’s suggestions.

First, Kian maintained the incident showed how Stonerock failed to “demonstrate proper gun ownership” since he seemingly frequently left his guns loaded, adding the situation got so out of control that the police officers on the scene “were actually concerned for their own safety as well as that of the son [of Stonerock].”

Second, Kian objected to Stonerock “doing community service at his own church, since that is not consistent with the traditional way the court operates with community service.”

After the argument between Kian and Crowell, Judge Reed granted the misdemeanor diversion for a year.

However, Judge Reed also included conditions that Stonerock must follow. Most notably, Judge Reed declined to confiscate Stonerock’s firearms; he didn’t believe that the court could “have anything to do with the guns” even if Stonerock were convicted of the offense of which he was charged.

In addition, Stonerock must perform 40 hours of community service for “some non-profit other than his church,” said the judge, explaining he usually does “not allow people to do community service in their own church.”

The date for the review hearing is set for July 14, 2022, in Dept. 7.

The right of the American people to make their own arms, from scratch or from kits, was never questioned and even affirmed by ATF bureaucraps until it became apparent that such guns could be made in vast quantity and excellent quality, then the goobermint realized their powers to control things was slipping.

POLYMER 80 SUES NEVADA OVER NEW DIY GUN BAN

Nevada-based Polymer 80, maker of both “80 percent” products and complete serialized pistols have taken emergency legal action against the state’s new law targeting so-called “ghost guns.”

Nevada’s Gov. Stephen Sisolak, a Democrat, signed state Assembly Bill 286 last month after it passed the legislature on largely party-line votes. The pending law established a confiscatory ban on all unserialized, self-manufactured firearms in the state as well as all “unfinished frames or receivers.” With that, P80 filed for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to bar enforcement of this law, pending further legal action.

“Polymer80 was forced to take this extraordinary action because, among many other reasons, AB 286, which was hastily and improvidently written and enacted, purports to curtail and criminalize products that are legal to own under federal law, and it does so through vague and unintelligible proscriptions,” notes the company. “At its core, AB 286 strips lawful citizens of Nevada of their basic, constitutionally protected rights, and targets corporations, such as Polymer80, for lawful activities that greatly contribute to the Nevada economy and support the rights of Nevadans.”

A hearing on the temporary restraining order is set for July 14 before Lyon County District Judge John P. Schlegelmilch.

The case by P80 is not the only litigation taking aim at AB 286. The Firearms Policy Coalition, along with two individuals, has also filed for a preliminary injunction against state officials in the U.S. District Court for Nevada, pending a trial challenging the new law.

“Nevada’s broad ban on the possession and construction of constitutionally protected firearms and precursor materials violates Nevadans’ Second Amendment rights and unlawfully deprives them of their property, in violation of the Constitution,” said Adam Kraut, FPC’s senior director of legal operations. “In order for a law-abiding individual to exercise their Second Amendment rights, they must have the ability to possess firearms, including those they build themselves. As our complaint explains, the right to self-build one’s own arms has been enjoyed, and at times absolutely necessary, since the founding of our country. We will aggressively litigate this action and seek an injunction to prevent this law from depriving individuals of their rights and property.”

In 2018, Bloomberg-backed Everytown announced it would spend $3.5 million in support of then-gubernatorial candidate Steve Sisolak and attorney general candidate Aaron Ford in Nevada, citing that the two were “gun-sense champions.”  Sisolak was also strongly endorsed for his current job by Giffords and the Brady Campaign.

DACA Immigration Program Invalidated by Federal Judge
Judge blocked approval of new DACA applications, but postponed the effect of his ruling on current program recipients

A federal judge in Texas on Friday invalidated an Obama-era initiative that provided deportation protections and work permits to some young immigrants, a ruling that places the program in jeopardy.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was unlawful because Congress never gave the executive branch the power to grant mass reprieves to immigrants who are in the U.S. without authorization.
Judge Hanen’s ruling barred the Biden administration from approving new DACA applications, but the judge stayed the immediate effect of his ruling on current DACA recipients.

The program has offered temporary protections to any immigrants in the country without legal authorization who were 30 years old or younger when the program was announced. DACA recipients must have arrived in the U.S. by 2007, before they turned 16, and satisfied other conditions, including being a student or graduate and having no significant criminal record.

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Opening Brief Filed in Second Amendment Case Before the Supreme Court

“…….In reaffirming the promise of the Second Amendment, Heller surveyed a wealth of historical materials that made clear beyond cavil that the vast
majority of jurisdictions have honored the right to carry arms for self-defense. That remains true today in most of the Nation—but not in New York. New York continues to make it all but impossible for typical, law-abiding citizens to exercise their right to bear arms where the right matters most and confrontations are most likely to occur: outside the home. The only people who may carry a handgun beyond the curtilage are those who can show, to the satisfaction of a local official vested with broad discretion, that they have a special need for a handgun that distinguishes them from the vast bulk of “the people” protected by the Second Amendment.

As to everyone outside that small subset, there is no outlet to carry handguns for self-defense at all. That restrictive and discretionary regime is upside down. The Second Amendment makes the right to carry arms for self-defense the rule, not the exception, and fundamental rights cannot be left to the whim of local government officials.

New York’s regime is irreconcilable with the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment. The textual inquiry is not a close question, as the text guarantees a right to “bear” arms as well as “keep” them, and a right to bear arms only within the confines of a home offends both common sense and original public meaning. ………….”

Commentary on the 4th Circuit’s ruling:

The Volokh Conspiracy

If the Fourth Circuit doesn’t reverse this en banc, it seems very likely that the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case (given the disagreement between the Fourth Circuit and the Fifth Circuit on this question, and given that the Fourth Circuit panel has struck down a federal statute), assuming the federal government asks for Supreme Court review. If the Fourth Circuit does reverse this en banc, the Court may still hear the case (but would be much less likely to, if the Fourth and Fifth Circuits end up on the same side, upholding the federal statute).

This is basically Round 2, because almost undoubtedly, the goobermint will file for an ‘en banc‘ from the whole bench of the Circuit and we’ll see what happens after that.

Federal Appeals Court Tosses Ban On Gun Sales For Those Under 21

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, at Charlottesville. Glen E. Conrad, Senior District Judge. (3:18−cv−00103−GEC)
Argued: October 30, 2020 Decided: July 13, 2021
Before AGEE, WYNN, and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges.
Vacated, reversed, and remanded by published opinion. Judge Richardson wrote the opinion, in which Judge Agee joined. Judge Wynn wrote a dissenting opinion.

Prospective handgun buyers sued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives seeking an injunction and a declaratory judgment that federal statutes prohibiting Federal Firearm Licensed Dealers from selling handguns and handgun ammunition to 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds (and the federal regulations implementing those statutes) violate the Second Amendment.

When do constitutional rights vest? At 18 or 21? 16 or 25? Why not 13 or 33? In the law, a line must sometimes be drawn. But there must be a reason why constitutional rights cannot be enjoyed until a certain age. Our nation’s most cherished constitutional rights vest no later than 18. And the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms is no different………

We first find that 18-year-olds possess Second Amendment rights. They enjoy almost every other constitutional right, and they were required at the time of the Founding to serve in the militia and furnish their own weapons. We then ask, as our precedent requires, whether the government has met its burden to justify its infringement of those rights under the appropriate level of scrutiny.

To justify this restriction, Congress used disproportionate crime rates to craft overinclusive laws that restrict the rights of overwhelmingly law-abiding citizens. And in doing so, Congress focused on purchases from licensed dealers without establishing those dealers as the source of the guns 18- to 20-year-olds use to commit crimes. So we hold that the challenged federal laws and regulations are unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

Despite the weighty interest in reducing crime and violence, we refuse to relegate either the Second Amendment or 18- to 20-year-olds to a second-class status.

A Defeat in the Courts for Biden’s Racist ‘Equity’ Policies.

If you were an Armenian Christian who fled your home to Glendale, California in 1915 to escape a genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks that killed roughly one million of your countrymen and women, how would you feel about paying reparations for black slavery that ended more than fifty years before you arrived?

Not so good, I would imagine.

The whole concept of so-called reparations in America is mired in such contradictions, tens of millions having migrated to this country from all over the world and continuing to do so well more than a century after slavery ended. Many of these people suffered from onerous, sometimes extremely onerous, even life threatening, conditions of their own.

Yet, the Biden administration—under, among other things, the meretricious mask of something called “equity,” as opposed to “equality”—is asking millions of our fellow citizens to pay for an acknowledged evil, slavery, in which they did not remotely participate.

President Biden and his people relentlessly pursue this “equity”—essentially a euphemism for reparations—largely for political reasons, further dividing the races in our society in a calculated manner and nurturing a grievance culture without end. (Gandhi’s “An eye for an eye and the world will die” means nothing to them.)

One particularly egregious way in which they were doing it was through the recently enacted program of forgiving loans for farmers based on the color of their skin.

It always sounded unconstitutional—besides being unremittingly racist—and, it turned out, that on July 8, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee declared it to be so.

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SUPREME COURT FOILS DEMOCRATS’ ATTACK ON CONSERVATIVE NONPROFITS

The second case decided by the Supreme Court today was Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta. The case arises out of an initiative by Kamala Harris, when she was California’s Secretary of State, to force nonprofits to disclose to the state the identities of their major donors.

Schedule B to [IRS] Form 990—the document that gives rise to the present dispute—requires organizations to disclose the names and addresses of their major donors.
***
Since 2001, each petitioner has renewed its registration and has filed a copy of its Form 990 with the Attorney General, as required by Cal. Code Regs., tit. 11, §301. To preserve their donors’ anonymity, however, the petitioners have declined to file unredacted Schedule Bs, and they had until recently faced no consequences for noncompliance. In 2010, the State increased its enforcement of charities’ Schedule B disclosure obligations, and the Attorney General ultimately threatened the petitioners with suspension of their registrations and fines for noncompliance.

Following a trial, the district court found for the plaintiff charities:

[T]he District Court held that disclosure of Schedule Bs was not narrowly tailored to the State’s interest in investigating charitable misconduct. The court found little evidence that the Attorney General’s investigators relied on Schedule Bs to detect charitable fraud, and it determined that the disclosure regime burdened the associational rights of donors. The District Court also found that California was unable to ensure the confidentiality of donors’ information.

This, of course, was the point. It was generally assumed that Harris wanted to know the identities of donors to conservative organizations so that they could be harassed by various California agencies, or so that their identities could be leaked in order for them to be “canceled” by left-wing activists.

In both cases, the court found that the petitioners had suffered from threats and harassment in the past, and that donors were likely to face similar retaliation in the future if their affiliations became publicly known.

The Supreme Court has long recognized that forced disclosure of association with a group can chill First Amendment rights. The seminal case was NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson:

We have also noted that “[i]t is hardly a novel perception that compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy may constitute as effective a restraint on freedom of association as [other] forms of governmental action.” NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U. S. 449, 462 (1958).
***
As part of an effort to oust the [NAACP] from the State, the Alabama Attorney General sought the group’s membership lists. Id., at 452–453. We held that the First Amendment prohibited such compelled disclosure.

In my view, this should not have been a difficult case. But the notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s decision, and the vote in the Supreme Court was 6-3, with Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer dissenting. Justice Sotomayor made this very silly argument:

The same scrutiny the Court applied when NAACP members in the Jim Crow South did not want to disclose their membership for fear of reprisals and violence now applies equally in the case of donors only too happy to publicize their names across the websites and walls of the organizations they support.

Of course some donors are happy to publicize their support for a particular nonprofit, but others, fearing personal harassment or damage to business interests, are not. Which is why the nonprofits in this case did not want to give Kamala Harris their donor lists. It is unusual to see such a foolish argument in a Supreme Court opinion.

The fact that liberal judges were happy to side with California’s effort to pry donor lists loose from conservative organizations is a stark reminder of the importance of not losing control over the Supreme Court to the Left.

Bill Cosby to Walk Free After Sex Assault Conviction Overturned
Cosby was convicted of drugging and molesting Andrea Constand at his suburban estate. He served two years of his three-to-10-year sentence

Pennsylvania’s highest court overturned Bill Cosby’s sex assault conviction Wednesday after finding an agreement with a previous prosecutor prevented him from being charged in the case.

Cosby has served more than two years of a three- to 10-year sentence at a state prison near Philadelphia. He had vowed to serve all 10 years rather than acknowledge any remorse over the 2004 encounter with accuser Andrea Constand.

The 83-year-old Cosby, who was once beloved as “America’s Dad,” was convicted of drugging and molesting the Temple University employee at his suburban estate.

He was charged in late 2015, when a prosecutor armed with newly unsealed evidence — Cosby’s damaging deposition from her lawsuit — arrested him days before the 12-year statute of limitations expired.

The trial judge had allowed just one other accuser to testify at Cosby’s first trial, when the jury deadlocked. However, he then allowed five other accusers to testify at the retrial about their experiences with Cosby in the 1980s.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said that testimony tainted the trial, even though a lower appeals court had found it appropriate to show a signature pattern of drugging and molesting women.

Texas Supreme Court dismissed lawsuit against gun store brought by families of the victims in church shooting

The Texas Supreme Court ruled the families of victims killed during a mass shooting cannot sue the gun store where the suspect purchased the weapon he used.

The lawsuit was brought in 2019, nearly two years after Devin Kelley gunned down 25 people at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, before killing himself after a chase. It was the deadliest mass shooting in Texas history.

Family members of the victims filed a lawsuit against Academy Sports & Outdoors, a sporting goods chain, where Kelley had purchased the AR-556 semi-automatic rifle, ammunition, and high-capacity magazine used in the shooting. The lawsuit argued the store wrongfully sold him the gun because he presented an ID from Colorado, where it’s illegal to sell high-capacity magazines.

After two lower courts declined to dismiss the case, Academy Sports appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, which ruled the lawsuit couldn’t go forward due to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which protects gun retailers and makers when their products are used to commit crimes.

The court also said the sale was legal despite Kelley’s Colorado ID. The US Gun Control Act required the retailer to comply with Colorado laws, but the court said it only applies to firearms, not the magazine.

Families of the victims are also suing the US Air Force. Kelley was convicted of domestic violence in a military court while serving in the Air Force. The Air Force later admitted it failed to divulge the conviction to the proper FBI crime database, which would have prevented Kelley from purchasing the weapon.

The Air Force said at the time it launched a review into how the records were handled.

SIXTH CIRCUITS GRANTS DOJ EN BANC REHEARING IN GOA’S BUMP STOCK CASE

The United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has granted an en banc rehearing of Gun Owners of America VS. Garland.

The Gun Owners of America (GOA) backed lawsuit deals with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) banning bump stocks through changing the definition of a machine gun. Most bump stock cases primarily focus on the Second Amendment issue. This case’s primary focus is the ATF’s use of Chevron Difference to create new laws through regulation instead of going through Congress. The courts seem keener on tackling Chevron Deference than taking on Second Amendment issues.

Chevron Deference dates to 1984. In Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc, the United States Supreme Court set a legal test to determine whether to grant deference to a government agency’s interpretation of a statute. The test consists of two parts. The first is “whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.” The second is that Congress has not dealt with the exact issue in question.

GOA’s counsel argues Chevron Deference can be applied only to administrative law. They further state that since the definition of a machine gun is criminal law, that distinction means that the ATF cannot use Chevron Deference to redefine a machine to include bump stocks. A three-judge panel agreed with GOA’s reasoning and ordered the district court to enact an injunction against the ATF’s arbitrary ban of the item.

Because the court granted the Department of Justice (DOJ) an en banc rehearing of the case, the panel’s decision is vacated, which means the District Court will not issue an injunction against the bump stock ban until the full bench hears arguments from both GOA’s lawyers and the Government lawyers. For all intents and purposes, it is like the three-judge panel’s decision never happened.

The decision to grant an en banc rehearing was not a total surprise, with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of the government in Aposhian v. Barr. That case was another case dealing with the bump stock ban. A three-judge panel ruled the ATF had the right to apply Chevron Deference to the definition of a machine gun. Counsel for Aposhian asked for an en banc review, but by a vote of 6-5, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the plaintiffs an en banc rehearing.

Gun Owners of America and Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) doubled down on their commitment to fighting back against the ATF using rulemaking to ban certain items. GOF is GOA’s legal non-profit. The two groups also plan to fight back against the ATF’s attempts to restrict the sale of unfinished frames and receivers and the changing of the classification of pistol stabilizing devices. The ATF is trying to use rulemaking to push a de facto ban on items that Joe Biden does not like.

“Today, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a brilliantly written opinion on bump stocks,” GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt told AmmoLand News. “But the fight is not over. Gun Owners of America and Gun Owners Foundation are committed to combating the lawless ATF at every turn in GOA v. Garland. And as the battle continues, GOA will continue to champion the common-sense decision from the appellate panel that a bump stock is not a machine gun.”

The court has not set a new date for oral arguments but did ask both parties to file briefs as soon as possible.

First Principles: The relevance of District of Columbia v. Heller

June 26 marks 13 years since the Supreme Court delivered its landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, ruling that the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects an individual right to bear arms and that the District of Columbia’s absolute ban on the possession of handguns was therefore unconstitutional.

Now more than a decade later, Heller will have a large influence in mounting a challenge to New York’s handgun law in the Supreme Court.

At issue in Heller was whether the Second Amendment guarantees citizens an individual right to own a firearm or rather that this right could only be exercised in regard to service in a militia.

Relying on extensive historical sources and other areas in the text of the Constitution, the court sided with the individual rights argument. The court’s opinion cited the Second Amendment’s operative clause, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The court noted that the phrase, “the right of the people,” appears three other times in the First, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments to the Constitution.

As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the court’s opinion, “All three of these instances unambiguously refer to individual rights, not ‘collective’ rights, or rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body.”

Section 400.00 of the New York Penal Code requires that applicants seeking a permit to carry a concealed handgun in public must have a “proper cause” for wishing to do so, and the determination of whether an applicant has demonstrated proper cause is left to the discretion of the county’s issuing authority.

Previously, this requirement has been unsuccessfully challenged in court. In Klenosky v. N.Y. City Police Dept., the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court ruled that permit applicants must “sufficiently demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community or of persons engaged in the same profession.”

Klenosky’s permit application was denied despite the fact that he was a practicing attorney who had received threats from dissatisfied clients, in addition to having an artificial leg which caused him to walk with a limp.

Last April, the Supreme Court agreed to hear New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Corlett in which two applicants in Rensselaer County were denied permits. One of the plaintiffs applied for a permit and took a firearm safety course after multiple robberies in his neighborhood, yet still had his application denied.

Reflecting on the ordinary use of language reveals that the potential unconstitutionality of New York’s “proper cause” provision is fairly clear. A “right” is something which can be done on one’s own accord, while things which can only be done through the grant of special permission are privileges. Additionally, the most basic definition of “to bear” is “to carry” which would indicate that the Second Amendment protects a citizen’s ability to carry a firearm for legitimate defense.

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Court calls the “insurrection” parading

Elizabeth Pace of WAVE-TV in Louisville, Kentucky, reported, “Indiana grandmother will be first person sentenced in U.S. Capitol riot.” What was the woman’s high and hideous crime?

Parading.

Not insurrecting, but parading.

The story said, “The FBI arrested Anna Morgan-Lloyd, 49, and her friend, Dona Sue Bissey, in late February. According to the criminal complaint, Bissey posted a picture of them inside the Capitol during the insurrection, including comments of most exciting day of their lives.

“Bissey’s case is still pending and scheduled to appear in court July 19.

“Morgan-Lloyd was charged with a single misdemeanor of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building. She entered a plea deal in exchange of three years of probation, 40 hours of community service and a $500 fine. A federal judge will declare her sentence Wednesday.”

This is such a bogus charge and bogus investigation that my eyeteeth hurt.

This really was a mostly peaceful protest that the media called a riot — unlike those riots that did billions of dollars in damage to city after city, which the media called mostly peaceful protests.

A ban on parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building violates the First Amendment in a manner the press once protested. Now the press hypes up a bunch of people protesting in the Capitol as some sort of combination of Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

How different it was when Marxists stormed the Senate Building in October 2018 to protest the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.

Remember?

CNN reported, “Comedian Amy Schumer and model-actress Emily Ratajkowski were among more than 300 people arrested Thursday in protests over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.”

Arrested is too strong a word, because the story said, “Capitol Police said they arrested 302 people during the demonstrations. Video from the scene shows the two actresses being detained after an officer asks if they want to be arrested.”

They said yes.

I don’t think they asked Grandma Morgan-Lloyd if she wanted to be arrested. And Capitol Police did not kill any of the demonstrators in 2018.

Unlike January 6, 2021, when one of the 2,200 Capitol Police officers shot and killed an unarmed Ashli Babbitt.

Nevada Governor Sued By Gun Owners Over Unconstitutional Ban On Firearm Modifications And Self-Manufactured Firearms

The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) has filed a motion for preliminary injunction in its federal Second Amendment lawsuit challenging Nevada’s unconstitutional statutes enacted in Assembly Bill 286, which established a new, confiscatory ban on all unserialized, self-manufactured firearms as well as all “unfinished frames or receivers.” The injunction is part of the FPC’s ongoing lawsuit, Palmer v. Sisolak, in which gun owners are suing the government for their right to keep and bear self-manufactured arms as outlined in the Constitution.

Along with the request for a preliminary injunction, a separate motion was filed for the gun owners who were suing the state government which was “for Expedited Briefing Schedule and Determination.” This argues that it “is necessary [to fast-track the case] so this Court can determine the matter and issue an injunction with enough time to prevent enforcement of the challenged laws and the dispossession of Plaintiffs’ property, or, alternatively, should the Court deny Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction, allow Plaintiffs sufficient time to seek relief from the Court of Appeals, and should it be necessary, seek relief from the Supreme Court.”

Firearms Policy Coalition explains the injunction:

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Standard operational, and expected, court procedure

U.S. appeals court blocks judge’s decision to overturn state’s assault weapons ban

A federal appeals court decided Monday to put on hold a judge’s decision to overturn California’s 30-year-old ban on assault weapons, but the legal fight could continue for months and may be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a brief order, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of Judge Roger T. Benitez’s June 4 decision, in which he likened an AR-15 semiautomatic to a Swiss Army knife and called it “good for both home and battle.”

Benitez’s decision overturning the California ban gave the state 30 days to challenge the decision. The 9th Circuit, acting on a June 10 appeal filed by Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, put Benitez’s ruling on hold pending decisions in other gun cases that are now before the court.

“This leaves our assault weapons laws in effect while appellate proceedings continue,” Bonta said in a tweet. “We won’t stop defending these life-saving laws.”

The 9th Circuit judges on the panel issuing the stay were Barry G. Silverman, an appointee of President Clinton; Jacqueline Nguyen, an Obama appointee; and Ryan D. Nelson, a Trump appointee.

The order said the stay would be in effect until the 9th Circuit ruled in another case challenging California’s assault weapons regulations. That case also has been put on hold pending a ruling in a lawsuit over California’s ban on large-capacity magazines.

An 11-judge 9th Circuit “en banc” panel is scheduled to hear arguments in that case Tuesday, and the ruling is likely to determine the future of the state’s assault weapons ban. A majority of the judges on the panel are Democratic appointees.

Benitez also was the judge who struck down the voter-approved 2016 ban on large-capacity magazines. A three-judge 9th Circuit panel upheld his decision, but the state successfully sought review by a larger en banc panel. Gov. Gavin Newsom authored the ballot measure banning the magazines when he was the state’s lieutenant governor.

Benitez, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, said the assault weapons ban unconstitutionally infringed on the rights of California gun owners and “has had no effect” on curtailing mass shootings.

California is one of seven states and Washington, D.C., that ban assault weapons. The California case is expected to go to the Supreme Court, where a majority of justices are conservative and some have been highly critical of gun regulations.

Twenty-two states, led by Arizona, which is under the 9th Circuit’s jurisdiction, asked the appeals court to uphold the order against California’s law.

“Calling modern rifles ‘assault weapons’ is a misnomer— they are most often used by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes like personal protection or target and sport shooting,” the states argued. “There is nothing sinister about citizens keeping or bearing a modern rifle.”

Joining Arizona were Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

The Firearms Policy Coalition, which challenged the assault weapons ban, criticized the 9th Circuit for putting Benitez’s decision “on ice” and choosing “government tyranny over human lives and rights.”……………

Intervenor Motion Filed in New York NRA Case

A motion filed Thursday in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, Commercial Division, seeks a court order to allow intervention on behalf of members of the National Rifle Association in the case against the association initiated by Attorney General Letitia James.

The motion, filed by NRA Board of Directors candidate by petition, Frank Tait, and member Mario Aguirre, president of Brock’s Gap Training Center, seeks to ensure that the membership is not held accountable for the actions of association officers and “to protect their rights as individuals and as NRA members under the U.S. and New York constitutions as well as applicable New York statutes.” If ultimately successful, this will preserve the NRA’s existence and install new leadership through an idea presented as speculation last August in this column.

“The NRA operated successfully for over 100 years prior to Wayne LaPierre and his associates gaining control of it and will continue to do so once they are removed,” the proposed intervenors argue. “Wayne LaPierre and those aligned with him are not the NRA. The current LaPierre-controlled Board of Directors is not the NRA. The LaPierre-controlled executive leadership is not the NRA. The rank-and-file membership across our fifty states is the true NRA.

“These people used the NRA to serve only their own ends, and neither the extent of their wrongs, the number of faithless individuals involved, nor the period of time over which these wrongs were perpetrated can change the fact that these were wrongs perpetrated against the NRA and its membership, who placed their resources and trust in these individuals as fiduciaries that were duty-bound to put the members’ interests ahead of their own. This they did not do,” they allege in the filing.

There are numerous other filings related to this motion, available on the New York State Unified Court System website, beginning with Document # 243 and going through at this writing to Document # 260. In particular, reader attention is called to Document #248, the “Proposed Answer,” quoted above, and especially Document #244, the Memorandum of Law legal arguments, embedded below.

AmmoLand Shooting Sports News will follow proceedings in this development which has the potential to reshape and redirect the New York case and give the NRA and its members a new path forward.