Category: Courts

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.

US Senator Tries to Undermine Branch of Government Intended as a Check on HIS Branch of Government

As anyone who has an elementary school level education understands, our Founders established our federal government to have three branches—the Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary—each designed with their own duties, and also designed to act as a check on the others from trying to assert too much power.

In a fairly simplistic breakdown, Congress determines what laws should be in place, the President makes sure the laws are put into place and enforced, and the Supreme Court determines if the laws comport with the US Constitution.

Sadly, some politicians simply ignore this dynamic, and hate being less powerful than they believe they should be.

Case in point: US Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).

Murphy has long been a staunch advocate of diminishing the Second Amendment. He has supported virtually every anti-gun proposal that has come before him for consideration, including banning guns. But, thus far, he has failed to achieve much success in imposing the Draconian restrictions on law-abiding gun owners he would like to see passed at the federal level.

There are, however, a handful of states that are under the political control of anti-gun zealots; states such as California, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York. These states have, as our readers know, passed laws that infringe on our rights protected under the Second Amendment; ranging from annoying bureaucratic impediments to exercising the right to arms to actual bans on some of the most popular firearms people choose for self-defense.

That said, while our Founders may have given deference to the states to manage their own affairs, it has been long established that there are certain things that are sacrosanct—like individual rights—and states can be limited as to their authority on establishing laws in certain areas.

So, after a trio of Second Amendment-affirming decisions handed down by the US Supreme Court based on challenges to laws at the state and city level—in the cases of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen—the days of anti-gun states and localities being able to violate Second Amendment rights with no accountability may be numbered.

This seems to terrify Sen. Murphy, and so much so that he has taken up the tactic of making thinly-veiled threats towards the US Supreme Court and questioning our nation’s very foundations of government.

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A conversation with constitutional attorney Stephen P. Halbrook

FULL IMPACT
ALMOST 11 MONTHS AFTER BRUEN, COURTS LAY DOWN LAW

It’s been almost 11 months since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a decision authored by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, which could be the most important Second Amendment victory in recent memory.

Bruen builds nicely on the groundwork already put down by the 2008 Heller ruling and the 2010 McDonald decision. Heller established decisively that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms in the home for self-defense. McDonald affirmed that local governments cannot outright ban possession of firearms and more importantly, incorporated the Second Amendment to the states via the 14th Amendment. Henceforth, whether a state has a right to bear arms provision in its state constitution, all states must comply with the Second Amendment.

Then, 12 years after McDonald, along comes Bruen, which declared New York State’s restrictive concealed carry law — designed more to prevent lawful carry than license and allow it — unconstitutional. And it has a critical section, which did away with what amounted to an invention by the lower federal courts to protect restrictive gun control laws by establishing “means-end” scrutiny in addition to the historical meaning and perspective.

In Thomas’ words, “In Heller and McDonald, we held that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. In doing so, we held unconstitutional two laws that prohibited the possession and use of handguns in the home. In the years since, the Courts of Appeals have coalesced around a “two-step” framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny.

“Today, we decline to adopt that two-part approach,” Thomas continued. “In keeping with Heller, we hold that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.”

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The school wants to protect personnel and building info reported to be in it, so, okay redact stuff like that.

Nashville school tries to block shooter’s manifesto. Why?

The Covenant School in Nashville was the site of a horrific atrocity. That’s not even a matter of debate. Anyone who tries to claim it wasn’t is too delusional to waste your time on. We might have different takes on what happened, but we know and agree that it did.

What we also know is that the killer wrote a manifesto outlining what they planned and why. The public has been clamoring for it. We want to see inside the mind of a mass killer and see if we can figure out what makes people do these kinds of things.

The school, however, is trying to block the release.

Over the weekend, the Covenant Presbyterian Church and associated Covenant School filed a motion to block the public release of the manifesto of the transgender shooter who attacked the school, court documents revealed…

Monday court filings revealed that the Covenant Church requested that the court prevent the documents from being released to the public, citing privacy concerns.

The motion, filed against the Tennessee Firearms Association, and another filed against the Nashville Police Association stated that the manifesto “may include and/or relate to information owned by Covenant Church,” such as “schematics of church facilities and confidential information” regarding employees.

The church claimed the manifesto’s release could “impair or impede its ability to protect its interests and the privacy of its employees.”

A judge is scheduled to hear the church’s motion on Thursday.

I’m one of those who have wanted to read the manifesto. While many of us have suspicions as to the killer’s motives, I want to see for myself what the killer said. I want to know what was going on in that sick and twisted excuse for a mind.

So part of me hopes the manifesto is released.

However, the school in question has concerns, and I can’t dismiss them out of hand. After all, could this manifesto be used as a blueprint for Nashville Part 2? Could this reveal information that would be bad for the students and staff?

Then there’s what isn’t said, which is why another part of me hopes we don’t see the manifesto. That’s the part familiar with the idea of social contagion.

Basically, the premise is that the more we cover these kinds of things, the more they happen. It’s similar to when we see a rash of suicides anywhere. The first one happens, then the coverage and discussion plants the idea in other minds and you see more and more.

There’s a good chance that social contagion accounts for much of what we’ve seen over the last few years.

Releasing the manifesto would increase the coverage of Nashville, thus potentially leading to still more mass shootings elsewhere. Even if Nashville never sees another, there could be actual ramifications for releasing the manifesto that will cost lives.

That said, is there a middle ground?

For example, ignoring the whole social contagion thing–which may or may not be an issue–could a redacted manifesto be released to the public? Remove anything related to security or any mention of specific people related to the school and release the rest so as to alleviate security and privacy concerns, but still share the motivations of this demented monster.

Then we all get something out of this.

I honestly don’t know what the answer is. I just know that we need to figure something out and do it soon.

Supreme Court Decides Against Early Intervention in Illinois AR-15 Ban Case

The Supreme Court has declined to issue an emergency injunction request against an Illinois city’s “assault weapons” ban on Wednesday.

The request was made by the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), which has challenged a ban on AR-15s and similar firearms enacted by Naperville, Illinois. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who oversees the circuit the case is filed in, requested a brief from the city in defense of its law after the gun-rights group asked the Court to intervene because a lower court upheld the ban.

“The application for a writ of injunction pending appeal presented to Justice Barrett and by her referred to the Court is denied,” the order in NAGR v. Naperville reads.

Barrett’s request for a brief in the case opened the possibility that the Court might be willing to jump the line and block the city’s ban on an emergency basis. That would have been a rare move, which the Court also declined to do in two recent Second Amendment cases challenging New York’s latest gun restrictions. The Court taking the less aggressive path of allowing the case to play out on the merits in the lower courts before deciding whether or not to get involved represents a setback for gun-rights advocates who had hoped they could achieve a quick win on the issue of assault weapons bans.

Naperville said it is “pleased” with the decision and vowed to continue defending its ban.

“The City’s ordinance is intended to protect the health and safety of our community,” Linda L. LaCloche, director of communications for the city manager’s office, told The Reload. “We will continue to defend the ordinance against legal challenges and expect future court decisions as the legal process runs its course.”

The case against Naperville’s ban is separate from the newer statewide ban. Naperville enacted its ban in August 2022. State lawmakers passed their ban in January 2023. Both have faced significant backlash from gun-rights supporters but the statewide ban has come under even more intense scrutiny since its passage.

The statewide ban has since been ruled unconstitutional in state and federal court, though those rulings have since been stayed by higher courts. Oral arguments in the case against the statewide ban were heard at the Illinois Supreme Court yesterday. It has also faced backlash from a majority of Illinois sheriffs who say they won’t enforce the ban because they consider it unconstitutional.

The Naperville ordinance has fared better by comparison. A federal district judge denied a preliminary injunction against the Naperville ordinance in February, and the Seventh Circuit rejected NAGR’s request to block enforcement of the law while its appeal is being processed. Now, the Supreme Court has done the same.

The Court’s denial of NAGR’s request in the Naperville case was done without any comment or noted dissents. That sets it apart from one of the emergency injunction denials in the New York Second Amendment cases. In Antonyuk v. Nigrelli, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, noted the Court’s decision not to intervene on an emergency basis reflected its deference to lower court proceedings rather than an endorsement of New York’s new gun restrictions.

“I understand the Court’s denial today to reflect respect for the Second Circuit’s procedures in managing its own docket, rather than expressing any view on the merits of the case,” Alito wrote.

The pair said the New York law in question presents “novel and serious questions under both the First and the Second Amendments” and went on to praise the district court’s ruling against much of the law as “a thorough opinion.” It noted the Second Circuit Court of Appeals had issued “unreasoned summary stay orders” against the injunctions in Anyonyuk and several other cases involving the New York law before encouraging the plaintiffs to refile for emergency relief if the lower court drags its feet.

“Applicants should not be deterred by today’s order from again seeking relief if the Second Circuit does not, within a reasonable time, provide an explanation for its stay order or expedite consideration of the appeal,” Alito wrote.

In NAGR v. Naperville, none of the justices said anything about the district court’s decision to uphold the city’s ban on the sale of AR-15s and other popular firearms. That provides less insight into how the justices may feel about the case itself beyond agreeing not to get involved at this point.

NAGR did not respond to a request for comment on the Court’s denial.

Comments O’ The Day

Again, just like in NY SCOTUS has chosen their procedure preferences over the rights of millions of Americans

Justices will not get involved with lower courts giving the anti-gun states whatever they want. We get screwed until a case on the merits reaches cert petition.