Category: Courts

I wouldn’t say it’s a ‘victory’. A judge on the Appeals Court simply stayed enforcement of an injunction to stop the law from taking effect.

NJ scores victory in federal court over concealed carry gun legislation

A federal court issued an order in favor of the state on Tuesday as the latest development in the legal battle over gun reform legislation.

The order, a stay requested by the state last month, will make it so that enforcement of limits on where concealed weapons can be carried in New Jersey is not restricted.

The motion filed by the state’s Attorney General’s Office said that not allowing enforcement of the restrictions “threatens public safety by allowing loaded guns in crowded theaters, bars, protests, and Fourth of July celebrations in parks, as well as zoos and libraries where children gather — just to name a few.”

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FOID card legal battle moves forward in Sangamon County

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) — Attorneys presented oral arguments Tuesday morning in the Sangamon County court battle over the constitutionality of FOID cards in Illinois.

Guns Save Life founder John Boch believes it is unconstitutional for the state to require people to have a license before they can buy guns.

Boch’s lawsuit was originally filed in 2019 against Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly, former McLean County State’s Attorney Don Knapp, and former McLean County Sheriff Jon Sandage.

However, the case is now only between Guns Save Life Inc. and Kelly as the Illinois State Police are the organization responsible for the FOID card system.

Plaintiffs argued Tuesday that the FOID Act burdens actions protected under the Second Amendment. Attorney Christian Ambler said the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the 2022 Bruen case found laws similar to the FOID Act are unconstitutional.

Although, the Attorney General’s office said this is a straightforward case. Assistant Attorney General Isaac Freilich Jones noted that people apply for FOID cards and the Illinois State Police issue the identification cards if they are not found to be criminals. Jones said there is no difference between waiting for a FOID card and waiting for a background check before buying a gun.

Ambler later argued that there is no historical support for a law allowing states to require people to have a license before they can purchase guns. He said people did not face this type of burden when the Second Amendment was approved by Congress in 1789.

Yet, the Attorney General’s office stressed there is no way to prove that people living in the 18th century would disapprove of the FOID law. They also claimed that there is no world where $10 is an unreasonably high fee to pay for a FOID card. However, plaintiffs said there is no historical context for fees people would face before purchasing their firearms.

Judge Jennie Ascher was assigned to the case Tuesday morning and told counsel that she would take the matter under advisement. Both sides were also asked to provide their proposed orders for the case within 21 days.

 

‘Bad people’ – like Zachey Rahimi – have often been the central player in the Court’s decisions about expanding and protecting civil rights. If you’ll remember, Ernesto Miranda, namesake of the ‘Miranda Warning’ everyone knows by heart from all the police/crime TV shows, was a long time thief and robber who had his first conviction for rape and kidnapping overturned because his civil rights protected by the 5th amendment had been violated.

Is SCOTUS ready for another 2A case?

While the Supreme Court has sidestepped both New York’s post-Bruen carry restrictions and Illinois’ ban on so-called assault weapons and high capacity magazines in recent months, likely because both cases involved emergency appeals, justices are set to consider another case this Thursday that has made its way to the Court under more ordinary circumstances… but one that could have major implications for gun control laws going forward.

The case is known as U.S. v. Rahimi, and its centered around the domestic violence restraining order issued against Zachey Rahimi that prohibited from owning firearms. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this year that the federal statute in question is unconstitutional under the Bruen test; not because the judges on the panel decided domestic violence is a minor concern, but because the Department of Justice’s assertion that only “law-abiding citizens” possess the right to keep and bear arms is so broad that its without any limiting principle. From the Fifth Circuit’s opinion:

Indeed, the upshot of the Government’s argument is that the Second Amendment right can be readily divested, such that “a person could be in one day and out the next: . . . his rights would be stripped as a self-executing consequence of his new status.” But this turns the typical way of conceptualizing constitutional rights on its head. And the Government’s argument reads the Supreme Court’s “law-abiding” gloss so expansively that it risks swallowing the text of the amendment.

Further, the Government’s proffered interpretation of “law-abiding” admits to no true limiting principle. Under the Government’s reading, Congress could remove “unordinary” or “irresponsible” or “non-lawabiding” people—however expediently defined—from the scope of the Second Amendment. Could speeders be stripped of their right to keep and bear arms? Political nonconformists? People who do not recycle or drive an electric vehicle? One easily gets the point: Neither Heller nor Bruen countenances such a malleable scope of the Second Amendment’s protections; to the contrary, the Supreme Court has made clear that “the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans,” Heller, 554 U.S. at 581. Rahimi, while hardly a model citizen, is nonetheless among “the people” entitled to the Second Amendment’s guarantees, all other things equal.

Rahimi is probably not a model citizen. In addition to the domestic violence restraining order, he’s accused of multiple shootings in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. But the state of Texas didn’t try to hold Rahimi without bond in those cases, which would have also kept him away from guns. Instead, they relied on a civil order of protection to deny him the ability to lawfully possess a firearm; a legal shortcut that might not be lawful after all.

Now the Supreme Court is set to consider Rahimi’s case in conference this Thursday, and with appellate courts starting to split on several other prohibited persons statute all eyes on are the justices to see if they’ll take up the case or allow the Fifth Circuit’s decision to stand. NBC News provided its own slanted coverage of the case, and while its report is just as biased as you’d expect, there was one passage that I think is largely correct.

The path to victory likely involves winning the votes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Although both were part of the 6-3 conservative majority in Bruen, Kavanaugh wrote a separate concurring opinion joined by Roberts in which he outlined what he called “the limits of the court’s decision,” making it clear that the Second Amendment does allow for gun regulations.

Citing previous court rulings, Kavanaugh specifically highlighted the prohibition on the possession of firearms by felons and people with mental illnesses as an example of laws that were not under threat.

I suspect that Roberts and Kavanaugh are the most likely justices on the conservative wing of the Court to uphold Rahimi’s conviction, but I don’t think it’s a done deal by any means. The lack of limiting principle in the DOJ’s argument is a valid concern on the part of the judiciary, and under the Bruen test laid out by the Supreme Court last year the government strained to find any true historical analogue to a prohibition on gun ownership because of a civil order issued by a court.

The earliest we’ll learn whether SCOTUS has accepted the Rahimi case will be next Monday when the Court issues its orders from this week’s conference. I won’t be surprised if there are four justices who are ready to hear the DOJ’s appeal, but acceptance doesn’t guarantee that the Biden administration’s argument is going to carry the day if and when Rahimi is heard by the highest court in the land. If the Court follows its own test instead of just relying on the status quo I think there’s a very good chance that the Fifth Circuit’s verdict will stand… but first we have to see if SCOTUS will step in or stand by once again.

Hateful Gun Banner Sent to Prison for Threatening Congresswoman Boebert

U.S.A. — A 39-year-old South Florida man who is an ardent anti-gunner was sentenced last week to 15 months in federal prison and one year of probation for threatening U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colorado, in a series of social media posts that targeted the Congresswoman for her strong Second Amendment support.

In 2021, Matthew Lee Comiskey sent five threatening tweets to Boebert that mentioned firearms and encouraged readers to do her harm. Comiskey originally faced five counts of making an interstate threat but pleaded guilty last year to one count.

His tweets show that Comiskey is violently anti-gun:

  • “Someone needs to put Lauren down like a sick dog. She is a true waste of life! Someone exercise their second amendment right to her face! Since the CIA is a failure and FBI is incompetent at charging her for being a terrorist it’s time to do it ourselves! Pew pew Lauren,” Comiskey wrote in September 2021.
  • “Don’t come to Florida us libs have big guns here and we stand (our) ground. Take you down like Trayvon,” Comiskey wrote a month later.
  • “Don’t worry Lauren, someone is coming soon to show your face the 2nd amendment in practice with a copper jacket. Enjoy,” Comiskey wrote.

Boebert’s pro-gun credentials are well known.

Before the 36-year-old conservative was elected to Congress in 2020, she owned Shooter’s Grill, a Western-themed restaurant in her hometown of Rifle, Colorado, where staff openly carried firearms.

Boebert has earned A-ratings from Gun Owners of America, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, and the National Rifle Association. In Congress, she is a member of the Freedom Caucus and the Second Amendment Caucus.

During his sentencing last week at the Paul G. Rogers federal courthouse in West Palm Beach, Florida, Comiskey told the court he let his “personal emotions get in the way of my common sense.”

His mother told the court that her son’s actions were “out of character.” Yeah right….
U.S. District Judge Robin L. Rosenberg rejected Comiskey’s requests for a shorter prison sentence or home confinement.

‘Smart Gun’ Inventor Explains Why He’s Trying to Get a California Gun-Control Law Struck Down

The man behind the first gun with an integrated biometric lock set to come to market is backing a suit against one of California’s most restrictive gun laws.

Kai Kloepfer, Biofire founder, told The Reload his company wrote an amicus letter supporting plaintiffs in a case against the state’s Unsafe Handgun Act (UHA) because it believes the law holds back firearms safety innovation. That law bans the sale of any handgun that isn’t on the state’s approved roster, which hasn’t seen a new handgun model added to it since 2013. Biofire wrote to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month urging them to strike down the law in Boland v. Bonta.

“Our argument is the roster doesn’t serve the needs of Californians because it arbitrarily restricts the options that are available,” Kloepfer told The Reload. “California is to guns as Cuba is to cars. You can’t take advantage of all the advancements in technology, including in safety, that have been made since the guns the roster grandfathered in.”

The company’s involvement in the case is at least a public relations win for the California Rifle and Pistol Association and other plaintiffs in the case. It could also help sway the appeals panel reviewing the case that the law does more harm than good in its stated goal of protecting Californians from unsafe handguns. The move also indicates how Biofire plans to convince gun buyers, who have long been skeptical of “smart gun” technology, it is working in their interests.

Kloepfer said the company, like other gun manufacturers, isn’t planning to become directly involved in general gun-rights legal activism. However, he said they do plan to pursue legal action when a law impacts their business.

“What we do engage in are areas directly involved with smart guns. And, in particular, we have this very strong stance of being against mandates of this technology,” Kloepfer said. “It doesn’t make any sense for the market. It doesn’t make any sense for our customers. It doesn’t make any sense for us. So, areas like Boland as well as, obviously, the now-repealed New Jersey mandate for smart guns and things like that. We do get involved in direct smart gun topics or topics that impact our ability to serve our customers.”

California passed the UHA in 2001. Initially, it barred the sale of any new handgun models without a loaded chamber indicator or magazine disconnect safety. In 2013, the state mandated new pistol models must include so-called microstamping technology. In theory, microstamping imprints an identifiable mark on every spent casing with the goal of helping police solve crimes. But, as Kloepfer pointed out, there has never been a production gun anywhere in the world that incorporates the technology, and critics argue the technology is impossible to implement in a practical firearm.

“Our understanding is that the roster requires microstamping, which has never been implemented in any sort of commercially available firearm,” he said. “Biofire does not have microstamping in it. Similar to every other manufacturer, we have not seen a viable approach there.”

The real-world effect of adding the microstamping requirement, which New York is now considering implementing, was a complete ban on selling any handgun models created after 2013. Outside of law enforcement officers, who are not subject to the handgun roster’s restrictions despite unrostered guns’ status as “unsafe,” Californians have been mostly limited to buying pistols first introduced to the market more than 15 years ago.

Boland v. Bonta is already changing that, though. In March, Federal District Judge Cormac J. Carney issued a preliminary injunction against the UHA because he found it likely unconstitutional.

“These regulations are having a devastating impact on Californians’ ability to acquire and use new, state-of-the-art handguns,” Judge Carney wrote. “Since 2007, when the [loaded chamber indicator] and [magazine disconnect safety] requirements were introduced, very few new handguns have been introduced for sale in California with those features. Since 2013, when the microstamping requirement was introduced, not a single new semiautomatic handgun has been approved for sale in California.”

California filed to appeal the ruling. However, it only requested a stay on Judge Carney’s ruling in regard to the loaded chamber indicator and magazine disconnect safety requirements. The court agreed to that request. That means the microstamping requirement will remain enjoined as the appeal proceeds.

Kloepfer said Biofire has a version of its gun that includes a loaded chamber indicator and magazine disconnect safety. But he argued those features shouldn’t be required either, and the company would continue to support the case against the law.

Biofire has already brought in thousands of pre-orders for its first “smart gun” model and plans to ship the first batch of $1,500-$1,900 firearms by the end of the year.

“We’ve seen really tremendous demand so far,” Kloepfer said.

The gun is only available for direct purchase through Biofire’s website at this point, but Kloepfer said the company hopes to expand in the coming months.

“We just very simply don’t have the inventory capacity to stock at distributors or things like that,” he said. “So, as we get larger and start to sort of fulfill a lot of this backlog of demand, the goal is definitely to build positive relationships with distributors, especially ones that our customers are excited about.”

Oral arguments in the Boland v. Bonta appeal have been scheduled for August 23rd.

 

Progressive Judge Says Commerce Clause Overrides the Bill of Rights

U.S.A. — At least one judge in the Third Circuit believes the Commerce Clause overrides the Bill of Rights. In a recent decision of The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in the case Range v Lombardo, on June 6, 2023, the en banc court ruled some felony convictions are not sufficient to restrict Second Amendment rights, based on the historical record. Eleven of 15 judges concurred with the majority opinion. Four judges dissented.

Judge Roth makes a strong case, based on Progressive philosophy, the Commerce Clause overrides the Bill of Rights. She gives the usual litany of Progressive “arguments”: Things have changed since the ratification of the Bill of Rights. The federal government has to have more power than the Bill of Rights allows. That was then. This is now. Here is part of the dissent from Judge Roth of the Third Circuit P. 96 of 107 :

In Bruen, the Supreme Court considered whether a regulation issued by a state government was a facially constitutional exercise of its traditional police power.

Range presents a distinguishable question: Whether a federal statute, which the Supreme Court has upheld as a valid exercise of Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause, 2 is constitutional as applied to him.

The parties and the Majority conflate these spheres of authority and fail to address binding precedents affirming Congress’s power to regulate the possession of firearms in interstate commerce. Because Range lacks standing under the applicable Commerce Clause jurisprudence, I respectfully dissent.

Judge Roth explicitly states the modern expansion of the commerce clause, to include virtually all activity that has any effect on commerce, overrides the Bill of Rights because the scope of modern commerce is far greater than commerce at the founding.

This case involves the Second Amendment. Roth’s logic as easily applies to the First Amendment and others. Virtually all First Amendment usage involves items that have a connection to interstate commerce – printing presses, telephones, computers, satellites, fiber optic cables, etc. Church pews are made of wood shipped across state lines, paid for by credit cards recognized by interstate banks. Nearly all homes affect interstate commerce. Under the expansive interpretation, the federal government could regulate all use and sale of homes and inspect them at any time, in spite of the Fourth Amendment. Under the expansive, Progressive interpretation, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are swallowed up. Virtually all of life is encompassed by the absurd extension of the Commerce Clause created by Progressive judges.

Most of what Judge Roth writes about modern times applied to commerce at the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights.

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Gun Advocates Quick to Sue Over Connecticut’s New Gun Safety Law

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont on Tuesday signed the most wide-ranging state gun control bill since a 2013 law passed in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, sparking an immediate lawsuit by gun rights supporters seeking to block a ban on open carrying and other parts of the new law.

It’s the latest legal fight over Connecticut’s gun laws, which are some of the strictest in the country, since the U.S. Supreme Court last year expanded gun rights and opened several states’ laws to challenges. The landmark 2013 gun law and others also are being contested in court.

“This bill that I just signed takes smart and strategic steps to strengthen the laws in Connecticut to prevent tragedy from happening,” the Democratic governor said in a statement. “The inaction of Congress on critical legislation to keep Americans safe requires each state to act individually.”

Idaho-based We the Patriots USA, a group that bills itself as a protector of gun and other rights, filed a lawsuit in federal court late Tuesday with other plaintiffs in an effort to block the law, the group’s lawyer said.

“Individuals have a right to bear arms under both the state and federal constitutions,” the lawyer, Norm Pattis, wrote in an email to The Associated Press on Tuesday. “The state constitution guarantees a right to protect oneself. No one sacrifices that right by walking out of their front door. In an era of defunding police, permissive bail reform and liberal clemency, folks depend on the right to self-defense more than ever.”

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Federal Trial Rolls On.

06.08.2023

Before we share a report of the third day of OFF’s federal trial to stop the unconstitutional Measure 114, we want to take a moment to once again send our sincere thanks to the Republican Senators who have risked so much to protect our rights and basic common sense by refusing to participate in the Democrat’s war on sanity.

By protesting the Democrat’s outrageous agenda by denying quorum, the Senate Republicans, and two Independents, (Art Robinson and Brian Boquist) have put the brakes on SB 348.

SB 348, as you know, was Floyd Prozanski’s effort to make Measure 114 even worse than it was when passed by out of state millionaires.

The Democrat propaganda machine and their mouthpieces in the media have been working non-stop to demonize the peaceful protest of the Senators who denied quorum to protect the minority, even as they continue to pretend to want to protect the rights of minorities.

So please take a moment to send a word of thanks to Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopp and ask him to share your appreciation with his fellow Senators.

At the trial we face a number of challenges. As you may know the Judge has declared that she will not hear arguments about the constitutionality of Measure 114 as applied. Her position is that the issue is “not ripe” because no one has yet been harmed by the measure.  Of course, the only reason no one has been harmed yet is because a state judge in Harney County, in a separate decision, placed an injunction on the measure. So it cannot go into effect until after a full trial in State Court which we expect to happen in September.

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En banc! U.S. 3rd Circuit Court (The Bruen decision strikes again)

TLDR:
Range pleaded guilty in 1995 to committing welfare fraud, a misdemeanor punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment. As we know, GCA’ 68 bans people convicted of crimes punishable by more than a year and a day in prison – which are usually felonies – from buying guns.
Range sued the government in 2020 saying the ban violated his 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.
The appeals court – en banc – ruled that since there were no text, history or tradition of restrictions like this when the 2nd and the 14th amendments were ratified, the restriction was unconstitutional.

Another scene in the opening act of the end of gun control the goobermint has foisted on us

No Loss of Second Amendment Rights for Welfare Fraud

Range_v_Garland_En_Banc_Opinion

Oregon Measure 114 gun law faces federal court test Monday

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal trial over Oregon’s voter-approved gun control measure opened Monday in Portland, marking a critical next step for one of the toughest gun control laws in the nation after months of being tied up in the courts.

The trial, which is being held before a judge and not a jury, will determine whether the law violates the U.S. Constitution.

It comes after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment that has upended gun laws across the country, dividing judges and sowing confusion over what firearm restrictions can remain on the books. It changed the test that lower courts had long used for evaluating challenges to firearm restrictions, telling judges that gun laws must be consistent with the “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

The Oregon measure’s fate is being carefully watched as one of the first new gun restrictions passed since the Supreme Court ruling last June.

The legal battle over in Oregon could well last beyond the trial. Whatever the judge decides, the ruling is likely to be appealed, potentially moving all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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New Oregon gun law, Measure 114, to face federal court test next week

Oregonians passed Measure 114 in November. It would ban the manufacture, purchase or sale of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. It would also require people to take a safety course and pass a background check to get a permit allowing them to purchase firearms. But before the law went into effect, it ran into a flurry of legal challenges at the state and federal levels.

The state case is expected to pick up again in September. And several bills meant to tighten Oregon’s gun laws are among the legislation sidelined by the Republican-led walkout in the Oregon Senate.

In the meantime, the federal bench trial — no jury — starts next week in Portland and will be heard by U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee. The federal trial, which is slated to run for five days, will result in a first ruling about whether the new law is legal under the U.S. Constitution. No matter what Immergut decides, the ruling will likely be appealed, possibly all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A lawyer for one of the groups hoping to overturn the law declined an invitation to come on Think Out Loud this week, citing the pending case. But a lawyer for the state, Michael Kron, did agree to come on the show and spoke to host Dave Miller on Wednesday. Kron is special counsel to the State Attorney General and is part of the legal team defending the voter-passed law.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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Gun rights advocates ask judges to uphold ruling in fight over gun law

Attorneys for Second Amendment advocates fighting New Jersey’s new gun law are urging a federal appeals court to uphold a recent ruling blocking most of the law from taking effect.

State attorneys failed to prove anyone would be irreparably harmed by U.S. District Court Judge Renée Marie Bumb’s order earlier this month affirming people’s right to carry guns in many places state lawmakers banned them, the lawyers wrote in two briefs filed Tuesday in response to the state attorney general’s appeal of Bumb’s order.

Attorneys representing New Jersey gun owners Ronald Koons and Aaron Siegel filed separate challenges the day Gov. Phil Murphy signed the law in December. The cases were later consolidated.

In two briefs totaling almost 60 pages, the attorneys repeatedly refer to Bruen, the U.S. Supreme Court case that struck down restrictions on gun carry, as a reason why the state’s bid to halt Bumb’s preliminary injunction is “flawed from start to finish,” as Siegel’s attorneys put it.

“Governments may bar the carrying of firearms in only ‘exceptional circumstances,’” Koons’ attorneys noted, citing Bruen. “The exception cannot become the rule.”

In defending lawmakers’ decision to ban guns in about 25 “sensitive places,” the state failed to prove such prohibitions are “historically justified,” as Bruen requires, Koons’ attorneys added.

“The state is left with speculative public-safety and public-confusion arguments,” they wrote.

But any ruling further altering the status quo would just add to public confusion, they added.

Both briefs take aim at the new law’s “anti-carry default,” in which lawmakers banned guns on government and private property that is open to the public, such as stores, and guns loaded and within reach in vehicles. Private property owners have the right to forbid guns on their property, but the government can’t make that decision for them, the attorneys argue. Bumb had enjoined both the private property and vehicle restrictions.

“To the extent there is any ambiguity, it must be interpreted in favor of the Second Amendment,” Koons’ attorneys wrote.

A spokeswoman from the Attorney General’s Office declined to comment.

Massachusetts assault weapons ban targeted in federal suit 1998 law at odds with Supreme Court decisions, group says

A national gun rights group has asked a federal judge to immediately halt the state’s longstanding ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines while the court decides whether the law should stand at all.

The National Association for Gun Rights, a Colorado-based Second Amendment advocacy group, on Tuesday was heard by First Circuit U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV in their attempt to overturn a 1998 assault weapons weapon ban made a permanent law in 2004 by then-Gov. Mitt Romney.

“Massachusetts has been directly violating the Second Amendment for decades,” NAGR President Dudley Brown said. “Under Bruen, there is no doubt in my mind the days of Romney’s Assault Weapons Ban are numbered. The National Association for Gun Rights will see to it that the rights of the people of Massachusetts are restored.”

The gun rights group says that their lawsuit comes following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, which struck down certain licensing conditions in New York State and elsewhere, including Massachusetts.

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Oregon’s magazine ban, pistol purchase permitting scheme set for trial

Oregon’s narrowly-approved Measure 114 has been on hold for the past several months thanks to a circuit court judge’s injunction, but a separate federal lawsuit is set to go to trial next week, and gun owners are hoping that the ballot initiative will be struck down entirely by the courts.

U.S. District Judge Karen Immergut declined to issue a temporary restraining order of her own shortly after the law was approved by less than 51% of voters last November, ruling that the magazine ban was presumptively constitutional on the theory that the magazines aren’t likely protected by the Second Amendment in the first place, but even if they are, banning them is okay because its meant to address “unprecedented societal concerns” about mass shootings. Now she’s set to preside over a five-day trial that will delve more deeply into the constitutional questions surrounding Measure 114’s ban on commonly-owned magazines, with the state of Oregon and Measure 114’s defenders arguing that the bans are a life-saving necessity and opponents maintaining that the ban is a violation of our fundamental right to armed self-defense.

Immergut last week denied each side’s motions to rule in their favor without a trial.

“The record contains genuine disputes of material fact, which would benefit from full development through trial,” she wrote.

She said she’ll consider whether large-capacity magazines “constitute a dramatic technological change from earlier firearms capable of firing more than 10 rounds.”

Immergut also noted that she’ll take up the constitutionality of the gun permit requirement under Measure 114, but she likely won’t consider how it will be applied in reaching her opinion.

Measure challengers contend the permits will deprive law-abiding citizens of guns because state police haven’t yet hired sufficient staff to handle the anticipated increase in background checks required to obtain a permit.

“Evidence about future implementation is not ripe for determination in this trial,” Immergut said.

Based on Immergut’s previous ruling, it seems pretty clear that she’s looking for ways to justify the ban, and as Reason’s Jacob Sullum noted shortly after she declined to issue a TRO, she seems willing to twist the words of the Supreme Court in order to do so.

The FPC cites a couple of real-life cases that suggest magazine capacity can be crucial in fending off armed home invaders. More generally, it notes that shots fired in self-defense often miss their target, even when fired by trained police officers. Measure 114’s exemption for police officers recognizes that fact, the FPC says, and “the average Oregon citizen has just as much right as a police officer to defend herself with standard capacity magazines.”

For Immergut, however, the crucial point is that situations where Oregon’s magazine limit would impair self-defense are “exceedingly rare.” In effect, she is suggesting that arms are not covered by the Second Amendment unless the government agrees that they are “necessary”—and not for “lawful purposes” generally but for self-defense in particular.

Immergut even questions whether “large capacity magazines” are “in common use” for “lawful purposes,” which seems undeniable given how many law-abiding Americans own them. “Plaintiffs have not shown that magazines capable of accepting more than ten rounds of ammunition are firearms in ‘”common use” today for self-defense’ and thereby covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment,” she writes.

The Supreme Court has said that the central component of the Second Amendment is self-defense, but nothing in Heller, McDonald, or Bruen suggests that only arms that are in common use for self-defense are protected. If so, that would set up a bizarre standard that would allow for single shot bolt action hunting rifles to be banned, while protecting the handguns that were the primary target of gun control activists for decades.

While self-defense may be at the heart of the Second Amendment, the text plainly (and simply) refers to the right to keep and bear arms. Unless the state of Oregon can come up with longstanding historical analogues to banning commonly-owned arms (which they’ve so far been able to do), the state’s ban should be overturned by Immergut. I’m not all that confident the judge will apply the Bruen test appropriately and fairly, especially given her initial opinion, but unless she’s engaging in some anti-gun activism from the bench it shouldn’t be a close call to find in favor of the plaintiffs when the trial concludes next week.

Big win for homesick sailor forced to surrender guns

If someone feels a little down because they miss their family, is that alarming? So alarming that people should be forced to give up their guns?

That was the question at the heart of the matter in a case involving a Navy sailor stationed in Hawaii who was denied a gun permit and required to turn in his firearms because he acknowledged seeing professional help to deal with that depression.

Some would argue that missing one’s family is a good sign, a sign that they have people who love them and whose love is reciprocated.

Hawaii didn’t really get that.

The state stomped on the rights of Michael Santucci and Santucci responded with a lawsuit.

On Thursday, he scored a big win.

Santucci did everything right and by the book. He sought to register his firearms with the state as required and acknowledged getting help for his depression.

As a result, he was told to hand in his guns and forfeit one of the rights he serves in our military to protect for the rest of us.

It was idiotic.

Luckily, the judge agreed.

The court agreed with Mr. Santucci that he was not disqualified from registering his firearms based on Section 134-7. It determined that Mr. Santucci’s affirmative response to Question 11 of the Firearm Application Questionnaire, which inquired about behavioral, emotional, or mental disorders, did not render him ineligible for firearm registration or ownership under the statute. The court concluded that Mr. Santucci should not have been required to provide a doctor’s letter or compelled to surrender his firearms solely based on his affirmative response to Question 11.

Honolulu argued that it was obligated by law to request a doctor’s letter in accordance with Section 134-3, which mandates firearm registration using forms prescribed by the Attorney General. However, the court found no basis for requiring a doctor’s letter after an affirmative response to Question 11, as neither the statute nor the prescribed form supported such a requirement.

The court granted the preliminary injunction, ordering the return of Mr. Santucci’s firearms, and enjoined Honolulu from demanding specific certifications solely based on an affirmative response to Question 11. It also stipulated legal fees to be paid in the matter, with Honolulu paying $102,500 and the State paying $28,000 more.

So, in other words, it wasn’t just a win for Santucci, but also for gun owners in general.

Look, while I disagree with it entirely, I get the desire to keep guns out of the hands of people suffering from mental disorders. Some people are dangerous, either to themselves or others, and many figure that’s a good enough reason to curtail the rights of others.

Yet most people who seek counseling aren’t a threat to anyone, including themselves. They’re just feeling down and don’t want to anymore, or they’re processing a rough childhood or some other kind of trauma so they can live a better, more fulfilling life.

For authorities to swoop in and decide such people cannot be trusted with guns is wrong.

Moreover, it’s likely to prevent people from seeking help in the first place.

The truth is that if Santucci was dangerous, he’d have just lied on the form. If he was planning to kill himself, he wouldn’t worry about a perjury charge. If he were planning something far, far worse than that, I’m pretty sure perjury would have been the least of his concerns.

Instead, Santucci just wanted to obey the law, and he got screwed for it.

Now, things are being set to right.

Justice, for once!

Last month I wrote about a case that the Pacific Legal Foundation was arguing before the Supreme Court.

At issue in the case, Tyler v. Hennepin County was the outright theft of Geraldine Tyler’s home equity. Geraldine is 94 years old, and currently living in a nursing home, having been driven out of her condo due to high crime (caused by the failure of the city and the county to enforce the law).

She fell behind in her property taxes, and the county sold her condo and kept all the money, including equity that remained after paying her tax bill.

It was an appalling act of government theft, but of course, appalling and government are often found in the same sentence.

Well, the Supreme Court ruled on the case today, and the news, for once, is good. The good guys won by a unanimous decision. Every single Justice agreed that Hennepin County is a bunch of lying, thieving, greedy, and tyrannical bunch of MFers.

Uh, maybe that last part is hyperbole. They only said lying, thieving and greedy. None of the Justices would swear in an opinion.

Governments are very big on seizing property. And in this case, the seizure was particularly galling because much of the money owed was due to penalties, not taxes. A small GoFundMe would have gotten the taxes paid off in a few days, but at 94 such things don’t generally occur to a person, and she had nobody to think of such matters.

The Court’s decision seems like a no-brainer, but then again it should have been for lower courts. The fact that she won in the Supreme Court is great news, but the fact that it had to be decided there is very bad news indeed. The county in which I live–and in many others around the country–have been stealing money from taxpayers without remorse.

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And with CHF and CAD/CAM-CNC manufacturing, such ‘forensics’ are even more problematical

FYI, this is a l-o-n-g article.

Devil in the grooves: The case against forensic firearms analysis
A landmark Chicago court ruling threatens a century of expert ballistics testimony

Last February, Chicago circuit court judge William Hooks made some history. He became the first judge in the country to bar the use of ballistics matching testimony in a criminal trial.

In Illinois v. Rickey Winfield, prosecutors had planned to call a forensic firearms analyst to explain how he was able to match a bullet found at a crime scene to a gun alleged to be in possession of the defendant.

It’s the sort of testimony experts give every day in criminal courts around the country. But this time, attorneys with the Cook County Public Defender’s Office requested a hearing to determine whether there was any scientific foundation for the claim that a specific bullet can be matched to a specific gun. Hooks granted the hearing and, after considering arguments from both sides, he issued his ruling.

It was an earth-shaking opinion, and it could bring big changes to how gun crimes are prosecuted — in Chicago and possibly elsewhere.

Hooks isn’t the first judge to be skeptical of claims made by forensic firearms analysts. Other courts have put restrictions on which terminology analysts use in front of juries. But Hooks is the first to bar such testimony outright. “There are no objective forensic based reasons that firearms identification evidence belongs in any category of forensic science,” Hooks writes. He adds that the wrongful convictions already attributable to the field “should serve as a wake-up call to courts operating as rubber stamps in blindly finding general acceptance” of bullet matching analysis.

For more than a century, forensic firearms analysts have been telling juries that they can match a specific bullet to a specific gun, to the exclusion of all other guns. This claimed ability has helped to put tens of thousands of people in prison, and in a nontrivial percentage of those cases, it’s safe to say that ballistics matching was the only evidence linking the accused to the crime.

But as with other forensic specialties collectively known as pattern matching fields, the claim is facing growing scrutiny. Scientists from outside of forensics point out that there’s no scientific basis for much of what firearms analysts say in court. These critics, backed by a growing body of research, make a pretty startling claim — one that could have profound effects on the criminal justice system: We don’t actually know if it’s possible to match a specific bullet to a specific gun. And even if it is, we don’t know if forensic firearms analysts are any good at it.

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Judge right on history of gun owners’ rights

After the Supreme Court ruled nearly a year ago that making it unduly burdensome to acquire a permit to carry a firearm violates the Second Amendment rights of Americans, New Jersey and New York tried a new approach.

The two states attempted to disqualify Americans with permits from carrying a gun at a broad assortment of places — so broad that, as Reason magazine notes, “effectively prohibits the carrying of that handgun virtually everywhere.”

Fortunately, a federal judge struck down the attempt at circumventing the rights to self-defense and to bear arms in mid-May.

One of the hallmarks for the right to bear arms the Supreme Court set forth was historical analogues — testing new policies against the history of our nation and whether similar limitations have ever existed. As Judge Renee Bumb noted, New Jersey failed to avail themselves of the opportunity to offer historical evidence. She was left to comb through the state’s history herself, and what she found was numerous examples of permissiveness toward carrying guns in many of the most similar conditions to which New Jersey attempted to limit the right to carry.

No one should be surprised by what this judge found. Modern sentiments aside, the rights of law-abiding gun owners and the necessity of guns as tools of deterrence and self-defense are ingrained in our nation’s history — and illustrate that guns are not the problem, nor gun control the solution.