Category: Courts

The first lawsuit, against manufacturers, was thrown out. This one is against dealers and distributors. I think it’ll fare no better, but you never know. In any case, most of the weapons the cartels have are stolen from the Mexican military, or sold to them by corrupt people in the Mexican military. You don’t buy M2, M240, M4 & automatic AK machineguns at the local gun store

Mexico files 2nd lawsuit against arms dealers in US

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Mexican government filed another U.S. gun lawsuit Monday, this time against five U.S. gun shops and distributors it claims are responsible for the flow of illegal weapons into Mexico.

Mexico’s first lawsuit, which was recently dismissed, targeted U.S. gun manufacturers. The second, which Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said was filed in Arizona’s federal district court Monday, targets gun dealers.

“We are suing them because clearly there is a pattern, we contend that it is obvious that there is weapons trafficking and that it is known that these guns are going to our country,” Ebrard said.

Ebrard promised last week the new lawsuit would target gun shops or dealers in U.S. border states who sell guns to “straw” purchasers who pass them on to smugglers, who then take the weapons into Mexico.

Mexico is suing for unspecified monetary damages and to demand the gun stores hire independent monitors to ensure that U.S. federal laws are followed in gun purchases.

Alejandro Celorio Alcántara, the legal adviser to Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department, said Mexico had chosen “the five worst stores” to name in the lawsuit, including three gun outlets in Tucson, one in Phoenix and one in Yuma, Arizona.

“They are not careful when they sell products, so they allow straw purchasers to buy guns,” said Celorio Alcántara, adding they sold multiple guns, multiple times to some purchasers. “We are saying they are negligent and facilitate straw purchasers, to the point of being accomplices.”

He claimed that U.S. criminal investigations had traced weapons purchases back to the stores, and said there was evidence that the shops had not filed required information on some purchases.

“The main argument of our lawsuit is that these businesses are an organized part of a criminal enterprise, a mechanism, to facilitate criminals and cartels in Mexico being able to use their weapons,” said Celorio Alcántara.

He said the first hearing on the suit might not come until the summer.

Ebrard said about 60% of the weapons seized in Mexico in recent years were believed to have been sold in 10 U.S. counties, mostly along the border. Mexico has very strict restrictions on weapon possession, but drug cartel violence has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in the country in recent years.

“We are going to show that many of these outlets where they sell these products in these counties I mentioned, are dealing with straw purchasers, and criminal charges have to be brought,” Ebrard said last week in an appearance before the Mexican Senate.

A recently enacted U.S. law defines straw purchasing as a crime, and sets out sentences of as much as 15 to 25 years if the offense is related to drug trafficking.

Celorio Alcántara said that was a key difference between this and Mexico’s earlier lawsuit: in the Arizona suit, Mexico is arguing a violation of U.S. laws.

The announcement comes several days after a U.S. federal judge dismissed Mexico’s first lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers; Mexico has said it will appeal that decision.

The judge ruled Mexico’s claims against the gun makers did not overcome the broad protection provided to firearms manufacturers by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act passed in 2005.

The law shields gun manufacturers from damages “resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse” of a firearm.

Mexico was seeking at least $10 billion in compensation, but legal experts had viewed the lawsuit as a long shot.

The Mexican government estimates 70% of the weapons trafficked into Mexico come from the U.S., according to the Foreign Affairs Ministry. It said that in 2019 alone, at least 17,000 homicides in Mexico were linked to trafficked weapons.

No, SCOTUS didn’t just rule against gun rights

Today it’s often difficult to determine when the mainstream media is being deliberately deceptive or is just incompetent. Whatever the case may be, they are routinely wrong.

Take for instance a recent ABC News headline reporting that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (ATF) bump-stock ban:

Supreme Court upholds bump stock ban in big win for gun safety advocates

The Supreme Court did no such thing.

In December 2018, the ATF published a final rule amending the code of federal regulations to declare that items colloquially known as bump-stocks fall under the definition of “machineguns” as defined in the National Firearm Act. As these items were not registered prior to when the federal government froze the sale of new machineguns in 1986, the rule made bump-stocks contraband.

Gun rights proponents across the country took exception to what many perceived as impermissible executive branch law-making. As a result, several cases challenging the new rule were filed in federal court. Rather than concerning the Second Amendment, at issue in these cases is the permissible scope of administrative rule-making and the extent to which administrative agencies should or should not be given deference in interpreting criminal statutes.

In the case Aposhian v. Garland, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld the ATF rule, at which point the plaintiffs petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case in August 2021. Similarly, in Gun Owners of America, Inc. v. Garland, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the ATF rule, prompting the plaintiffs to petition the Supreme Court in March 2022. On October 3, the Supreme Court declined to hear either case.

First, denying cert in a case is not a ruling on the merits of that case. The decision not to take a case is not an explicit endorsement of a lower court’s ruling. In his dissent in Darr v. Burford (1950) Justice Felix Frankfurter explained,

The significance of a denial of a petition for certiorari ought no longer to require discussion. This Court has said again and again and again that such a denial has no legal significance whatever bearing on the merits of the claim. The denial means that this Court has refused to take the case. It means nothing else.

Second, there is good reason in this instance why the Supreme Court may want to take a wait and see approach to how the law in this area develops in the lower federal courts.

At present, another bump-stock case, Cargill v. Garland, is making its way through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In December 2021 the Fifth Circuit upheld the ATF rule in this case. However, following a petition by the plaintiff, in June the Fifth Circuit agreed to hear the case en banc (in front of the full court, rather than just a panel of circuit court judges).

Could the Supreme Court be waiting on the Fifth Circuit to rule en banc before entertaining a bump-stock case? That is a distinct possibility. What isn’t is that the Supreme Court has made a ruling on the merits of these important cases. Reporters should know better.

Man can argue he needed handgun because police did not protect him, N.J. court rules

A state appeals court has reversed a man’s handgun possession conviction after finding he should have been able to argue he needed it for protection from people trying to kill him for cooperating with police.

The court, in a Tuesday decision, found merit in the man’s arguments that the danger he faced was real, and that authorities had not sufficiently helped him – after he’d helped them by wearing a wire in an investigation.

The man, who was identified only by his initials, was beat up twice, shot at once and moved residences before finally arming himself in case his attackers accosted him again, the decision describes.

Before that occurred, a Lawrence police officer arrested him during a traffic stop in 2015, and found the Beretta pistol in his pants. He was 21 years old at the time.

After being unable to suppress the gun evidence and the trial judge in Mercer County ruling against his defense, the necessity defense, the man took a plea bargain. A judge sentenced him to eight years behind bars with four as a mandatory minimum.

The man’s appeal failed in one part. He argued that the Lawrence police officer overstepped during the traffic stop by asking the driver to roll down the rear, tinted windows, where he found the man as one of two backseat passengers.

The officer also smelled marijuana and eventually searched the car, with the driver’s consent, and the occupants – and only found the gun in the defendant’s pants. One bullet was in the chamber.

The appeals court found the officer’s actions lawful, as he was dealing with four people during a nighttime stop and the steps he took to protect himself were reasonable.

The court took issue with the barring of the necessity defense, which allows defendants to argue that their conduct, while normally illegal, was necessary or justified in a limited instance – in this case, carrying a gun.

The decision says the man described his situation to a police detective: he’d helped police and prosecutors in a prior case and now people were “after him.”

After the two assaults and being fired upon, and moving, he sought help from a detective and the prosecutor from the case, but received no assistance. He told police he wanted to move out of state, but could not due to being on probation.

He then admitted obtaining the gun a few days prior and knew it was loaded with the bullet.

He had a plan, he told the detective interviewing him, that if confronted a fourth time, he’d fire the gun and flee.

The Mercer prosecutor’s office argued against the necessity defense in the appeal, saying the man had not qualified for the defense, specifically that he had not been met with an “imminent and compelling” emergency.

The appeals court disagreed.

The man wore a wire for police. “By doing so, he assisted police in performing their duty to protect the public. Through no fault of his own, his cooperation with the police led to him being beaten up twice and fired upon in his own community,” the decision said.

“Defendant was acutely aware that other individuals in the community wanted to hurt or kill him. We find more than sufficient evidence … to conclude that the threat to defendant was ‘imminent and compelling,’ and raised a reasonable expectation in the defendant that he would suffer physical injury, if not death,” the decision went on.

The defendant’s, “plea to law enforcement for assistance went unanswered. He tried to move out of state to avoid the threat to his life, however he was unable to do so. Defendant also changed his local residence to avoid encounters with his attackers, which didn’t work, as he was attacked outside his new home.”

“Consequently,” it said, “he faced a crisis with no opportunity to avoid repeated assaults until he was severely injured or killed.”

A jury should hear those arguments and be the deciders, the decision says.

NY AG appeals judge’s decision halting enforcement of most new carry restrictions

New York Attorney General Letitia James is asking the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a federal judge’s decision to halt enforcement of many aspects of the state’s new Concealed Carry Improvement Act, arguing that there’s a “serious risk of irreparable harm to public safety and the possibility of regulatory chaos” if U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby’s decision to grant a temporary restraining order is allowed to take effect.

Suddaby’s ruling left intact, at least for now, the draconian training requirements imposed by the state in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, but barred enforcement of most of the state’s new “sensitive places” where guns are banned, as well as many of the other requirements mandated for those applying for a concealed carry permit; turning over social media accounts and informing authorities of all other family members living with the applicant among them.

In her request to the Second Circuit, James claims that if the appeals court allows the TRO to take effect, the result will be massive confusion over the status of the law, which might be true but pales in significance compared to the daily deprivation of the right to keep and bear arms that the CCIA has enabled.

Exposing eighteen million New Yorkers to a heightened risk of gunfire severely outweighs any prejudice to plaintiffs here from a stay.Five plaintiffs allegedly wish to carry guns into specific sensitive or restricted places, such as the Rosamond Gifford Zoo, the airport for a flight to Tennessee, the church where one plaintiff lives, or Catskills State Park, through which another plaintiff must drive.

Yet the district court restrained defendants from enforcing the challenged CCIA provisions on a statewide basis, as applied to anyone — a remedy far beyond what relates to the individual harms alleged.

Well, no. Virtually everyone who possesses a concealed carry permit and all those who wish to do so are being harmed by the state’s new restrictions. As for the potential for “regulatory chaos” if the new laws are halted, I have news for James and other anti-gun Democrats: the CCIA is already sowing confusion. In fact, in St. Lawrence County no concealed carry applications have been issued since the law took effect back on September 1st because no one is clear on what the law entails.

“We just haven’t been accepting applications since the new law has taken effect. Number one, the state has already changed the application that they originally came out with once. You know, to keep processing stuff that’s not even right to begin with. So at this point basically what it is is that we’re waiting for clarification from both the state and the judge,” said Santamoor.

As New York’s gun laws work their way through the courts, gun shop owner Matt Pinkerton is frustrated, believing the new laws were flawed from the start.

“I completely understand why the permit process would be slowed or halted at this point because the governor has put into place a system that is very logistically difficult to enact,” he said.

For New York lawmakers, the confusion isn’t a bug, but a feature of the new law meant to artificially depress the number of citizens exercising their right to carry a firearm in self-defense.

James offered no real historical analogues to the sweeping number of locations deemed “sensitive” and off-limits to concealed carry. Instead, she argues to the Second Circuit that it’s the plaintiffs themselves who had the burden of showing that the Second Amendment’s text and tradition “plausibly encom-passed any of these areas.” In a bit of circular logic, James claims that once a state has declared a location to be a “sensitive place”, it should automatically be presumed to be justified.

Carrying weapons in sensitive places has traditionally been “altogether prohibited.” These areas thus fall outside the “scope of the Second Amendment,” and are “an exception to the general right to bear arms” codified therein. 

The question, of course, is whether New York is violating the Second Amendment rights of its residents by declaring broad swathes of the state to be “gun-free zones.” Under James’s argument, once the state has deemed a particular location to be “sensitive”, it automatically falls outside of the Second Amendment’s protections; a nice trick, but one that flies in the face of what the Supreme Court actually said in Bruen.

James also takes issue with how Suddaby determined that many of the state’s “sensitive places” don’t have similar analogues in U.S. history.

Second, the court’s analogies were flawed—none more so than for barring weapons on mass transit, which the court held to be inconsistent with nineteenth-century laws authorizing carrying pistols when “‘on a journey.’” Old and new regulations may be “relevantly similar” in many ways.

Comparing hurtling through tunnels in electrically powered cars filled with thousands of people (including schoolchildren and the elderly) to journeying via horse through the countryside is like saying that “a green truck and a green hat are relevantly similar” because both are green.

It’s worth noting that “hurtling through tunnels in electrically powered cars” with a permitted concealed firearm was perfectly legal on New York City subways until just a few weeks ago. The ban on concealed carry on public transportation in the city and state wasn’t enacted until after the Bruen decision was handed down; before that those chosen few who were lucky or well-connected enough to receive a permit were perfectly fine carrying on the subway. Only after the average New Yorker was told she could do the same did the state reverse course and declare mass transit to be “sensitive places” where guns must be banned; again without any evidence that there were similar bans in place at the time of the ratification of either the Second or Fourteenth amendments.

All in all I found James’ initial filing to be less than impressive, but given the Second Circuit’s past hostility towards the right to keep and bear arms she might not need a strong argument to be successful at blocking Suddaby’s ruling from taking effect… at least immediately. No matter what the Second Circuit decides, expect this to be appealed up to the Supreme Court, and hopefully it won’t take long for the justices who struck down New York’s “may issue” laws to halt enforcement of the state’s latest infringements on the right to keep and bear arms.

SAF FILES MEMORANDUM FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

BELLEVUE, WA – Attorneys for the Second Amendment Foundation’s challenge of California’s new law that includes a one-way fee-shifting penalty to discourage lawsuits against restrictive gun laws have filed a memorandum of points and authorities in support of their motion for a preliminary injunction.

Attorneys Bradley A. Benbrook and Stephen M. Duvernay of the Benbrook Law Group, PC, and David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson and Joseph O. Masterman of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC filed the memorandum, which asserts plaintiffs have already suffered harm due to the constitutional violations contained in the new law.

The lawsuit, and this new memorandum, allege the law (Section 1021.11 of the California Penal Code) is unconstitutional under the Supremacy Clause, and that it also violates the First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances. The statute also discriminates against gun rights plaintiffs in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, according to the lawsuit.

SAF is joined by Gunfighter Tactical, LLC, PWGG, L.P., the San Diego County Gun Owners’ PAC, California Gun Rights Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., Dillon Law Group, P.C., John Phillips, Ryan Peterson, George M. Lee, John W. Dillon and James Miller, for whom the lawsuit is named.

The new motion also says Section 1021.11 has “caused several Plaintiffs to dismiss or refrain from bringing additional lawsuits challenging other California firearms regulations that they believe are unconstitutional.”

“We are pulling out all the stops in fighting this new statute because of its egregious nature,” said SAF founder and executive vice president Alan M. Gottlieb, one of the plaintiffs in the case known as Miller v. Bonta. “Section 1021.11 is part of Senate Bill 1327, adopted earlier this year in reaction to a Texas law passed last year, which is about abortion. The California law was crafted as a political response to the Texas statute, which California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the chief defendant in our case, described as ‘blatantly unconstitutional.’

“Bonta is trying to have it both ways,” Gottlieb continued. “He simply cannot protest a law he considers unconstitutional by enforcing another law which is equally unconstitutional in what amounts to a childish political snit that began with California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California legislature.”

 

A Second Amendment With Teeth
The Court’s Bruen decision actually protects Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

Democrat-controlled state governments may finally be starting to realize the precedent problem standing in the way of their gun-control agenda. As I wrote when the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen in June, the Court declared in that ruling a strong restoration of the Second Amendment: “the Second Amendment protects the rights of law-abiding, adult citizens (“the People”) to keep and bear arms, particularly weapons in common use. Therefore, any law restricting that right needs to be consistent with the Nation’s ‘historical tradition of firearm regulation.’”

The Court laid out a very strict and specific rule to which gun-control laws must conform in order to avoid being declared unconstitutional. As history shows, there were very few (if any) regulations concerning commonly used weapons at the time the Second Amendment was ratified. Therefore, it stands to reason that there are very few regulations concerning commonly used weapons that will survive Second Amendment analysis post-Bruen.

Of course, that will not stop the left from trying. But perhaps they will finally start to see the pattern. At the end of the 2021-2022 Supreme Court term, the Court issued a series of summary decisions in four cases, including Bianchi v. Frosh, vacating lower-court decisions principally involving “extended” magazines and assault-rifle bans. The Court’s decisions required the lower federal courts to rehear the cases in light of the decision in Bruen.

On October 5, the Supreme Court vacated a lower-court decision in a case called Morin v. Lyver. The lower court upheld the constitutionality of a Massachusetts statute that included strict licensing standards to purchase or possess a pistol. The law included a lifetime ban on licensing to those convicted of certain non-violent offenses involving possession or use of firearms. The Supreme Court used language identical to that in Bianchi v. Frosh and the other cases mentioned above: the case was “remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit for further consideration in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen.”

These results are not surprising. The U.S. Supreme Court takes cases and writes extensive opinions when there are difficult questions of law that have not been answered, when bad precedent needs to be revisited and overwritten, and when different federal circuit courts disagree on interpretation of law. The Court will not waste its time hearing cases that have already been clearly decided—a category that will include most Second Amendment cases post-Bruen.

The Bruen test is clear. If a law restricts the right to keep and bear arms, especially weapons in common use, that law is unconstitutional unless the law is consistent with traditional, historic firearm regulations. Laws that ban or severely regulate weapons in common use are simply not going to survive scrutiny under Bruen. Both handguns and long rifles such as AR-15s are objectively weapons in common use.

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Obama Judge Denies NY Jews a Temporary Stop of Hochul’s Ban On Guns In Synagogues

In an insulting reiteration of NY Governor Kathy Hochul’s stunning hypocrisy over the rights of people to defend themselves, an Obama-appointed judge has DENIED a requested Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against the NY state “sensitive area” gun ban called the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA), which went into effect September 1.

As I recently reported, the New York State Jewish Gun Club filed suit on September 29, after members and the group’s legal council recognized the threat of the CCIA – which Hochul signed on July 1, and which represents her leftist NY Assembly’s blitzkrieg response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June “Bruen” gun decision supposedly insuring that the right to keep and bear arms also includes the obvious right to carry a concealed weapon outside the home. The half-hearted Bruen decision left wiggle room for oppressive state politicians to claim that certain “sensitive” public areas were off limits to the right of concealed-carry.

And Hochul’s hypocrisy is so towering that, even as she backed a “legislative package” supposedly honoring Holocaust victims over the summer, she and her pals in the state legislature smacked together a new statute that would ban concealed carry within synagogues and houses or worship — or, as I mentioned, at any of what they ambiguously call places where there is a “religious observance.”

In other words, she is threatening people that she will use gun-grabbing state aggression, and possibly use it against some of the same Holocaust survivors and/or their descendants who were attacked by the gun-grabbing Nazi regime.

Now, the new development. The NY State Jewish Gun Club filing in Federal District Court to temporarily restrain enforcement of Hochul’s gangland CCIA “religious observance” and “house of worship” gun ban has proven fruitless. BearingArms’ Cam Edwards caught the news, right away:

“Their first request was for a temporary restraining order prohibiting the state from enforcing that portion of the Concealed Carry Improvement Act; a request that was denied on Monday afternoon by U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick.”

And, guess what? The judge got his tax-funded job thanks to leftist political engineers:

“In his ruling, the Obama-appointed judge (who also has political ties to gun control fans Michael Bloomberg and former NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo) found that the plaintiffs had not met the requirements for a TRO (Temporary Restraining Order)…”

Here, observers can see a telling sign of the difference between a person who respects natural, God-given, rights, and a person looking only at material concerns, a person who cannot understand, or will not acknowledge, that the term “injury” does not pertain merely to physical harm, but includes the abstract and perennial realm of principles.

Broderick’s argument stands on the spongy notion that, as he declares:

“…I find that the harm pled is too remote and speculative, and fails to reach the stringent standard of ‘immediate irreparable harm.’”

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BLM Rioter Who Murdered Retired St. Louis Police Captain Sentenced to Life in Prison Without Parole

The 26-year-old man convicted of killing retired St. Louis Police Captain David Dorn was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Wednesday.

Stephan Cannon’s sentencing comes after a jury convicted him in July of fatally shooting Dorn in June 2020. The 77-year-old was responding to a burglary alarm at a friend’s pawn shop during a night of Black Lives Matter rioting when Cannon shot him.

Cannon was convicted in July on all of felony charges he faced, including first-degree murder, first-degree robbery, first-degree burglary, stealing $750 or more, unlawful possession of a firearm, and three counts of armed criminal action…..

It’s also blatant vote pandering a month from midterm elections that looks to rake the demoncraps over the coals.

Biden Pardons Thousands Convicted of Marijuana Possession Under Federal Law
The move represents a fundamental change in America’s response to a drug that has been at the center of a clash between culture and policing for more than a half-century.

WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday pardoned thousands of people convicted of marijuana possession under federal law and said his administration would review whether marijuana should still be in the same legal category as drugs like heroin and LSD.

The pardons will clear everyone convicted on federal charges of simple possession since it became a crime in the 1970s. Officials said full data was not available but noted that about 6,500 people were convicted of simple possession between 1992 and 2021, not counting legal permanent residents. The pardons will also affect people who were convicted under District of Columbia drug laws; officials estimated that number to be in the thousands.

The pardons will not apply to people convicted of selling or distributing marijuana. And officials said there are no people now serving time in federal prisons solely for marijuana possession. But the move will help remove obstacles for people trying to get a job, find housing, apply to college or get federal benefits.

Mr. Biden urged governors to follow his lead for people convicted on state charges of simple possession, who vastly outnumber those charged under federal laws.

Still, the president’s actions — which come about a month before the midterm elections and could help energize Democratic supporters — represent a fundamental change in America’s response to a drug that has been at the center of a clash between culture and policing for more than a half-century.

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Federal Judge Blocks Latest New York Gun-Carry Restrictions

New York’s attempt to restrict gun carry after its previous law was struck down by the Supreme Court has failed.

Federal district judge Glenn Suddaby issued a temporary restraining order against the state’s enforcement of most provisions in the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA). He found all of the novel policies restricting gun carry by those with valid permits were unconstitutional under the standard set in New York State Pistol and Rifle Association v. Bruen, though he also upheld some more common regulations.

“Simply stated, instead of moving toward becoming a shall-issue jurisdiction, New York State has further entrenched itself as a shall-not-issue jurisdiction,” Suddaby wrote. “And, by doing so, it has further reduced a first-class constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense (which, during the 19th and 18th centuries in America, generally came with an assumption that law-abiding responsible citizens were not a danger to themselves or others unless there was specific ground for a contrary finding) into a mere request (which is burdened with a presumption of dangerousness and the need to show ‘good moral character’).”

The ruling represents a further victory for gun-rights advocates who have challenged severe restrictions on gun carry and a further setback for states that have sought to severely limit who can carry a gun and where they can carry it. Judge Suddaby’s decision is also one of the first to apply the Bruen standard to a gun-carry law passed in response to the ruling. It could serve as a guide for other federal courts across the country dealing with challenges to similar laws.

Suddaby ruled the state could not enforce its “good moral character” clause unless there is a preponderance of evidence the applicant is a threat to others with the exception of self-defense. He blocked the requirement that applicants turn over their social media history and information on others who live with them. He also blocked the CCIA’s requirement that applicants meet with permitting officials for an in-person interview,

Mexican official says new lawsuit against US gunmakers is on the way

There’s no reason to believe the outcome will be any different than the first lawsuit that the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador brought against U.S. gun makers; a dismissal of the case long before it ever reached trial. Still, with AMLO’s cartel strategy of “hugs, not bullets” resulting in even more cartel violence, it’s no surprise that he and other officials are trying to distract from their own failures by pinning the blame on the US firearms industry.

Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told the Mexican Senate on Wednesday that the government’s next lawsuit will be filed in the border state of Arizona, though he didn’t say whether any gun control groups will be a part of this new effort as they were the first time around.

During his speech on Wednesday, Ebrard referred to a bipartisan package of gun safety measures passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden in June. The law blocks gun sales to those convicted of abusing unmarried intimate partners and cracks down on gun sales to purchasers convicted of domestic violence.

“Illicit arms trafficking is already a crime in the United States,” Ebrard said.

“You have to start establishing criminal responsibilities because the companies that are selling these weapons in these counties (in Arizona), which are very few, of course they know where those weapons are going,” he added, but did not specify which companies he was referring to.

Ebrard makes it sound as if there are no laws whatsoever governing gun sales from licensed firearms retailers, even though border state gun dealers not only have to follow the long list of federal regulations surrounding firearm transfers, but even have special requirements placed on them like reporting multiple sales of modern sporting rifles to the ATF.

Frankly, if he really wants to talk about establishing criminal responsibilities, I’d say he should start much closer to home and crack down on the graft, corruption, and theft within the Mexican armed forces.

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Well, she was unable to define what a woman was either, so her gobbletygook here shouldn’t have been a surprise.

KBJ’s Jumbled Musings on the Fourteenth Amendment

In today’s [Oct 3rd ] oral argument in Merrill v. Milligan, Justice Jackson capped her very long questioning of Alabama solicitor general Edmund LaCour with a speech/question that went on for around four minutes and that runs a full three pages (57:2-60:2) in the transcript. In her speech, Jackson states that the Framers of the 14th Amendment adopted it “in a race conscious way,” as they were “trying to ensure that people who had been discriminated against, the freedmen in — during the reconstructive — reconstruction period were actually brought equal to everyone else in the society.” As she puts it, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 “specifically stated that citizens would have the same civil rights as enjoyed by white citizens,” and the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to ensure that the Act had a solid “constitutional foundation.”

Somehow Jackson leaps from these propositions to the assertion that the 14th Amendment doesn’t embody “a race-neutral or race-blind idea in terms of the remedy” for discrimination against freed slaves.

I don’t understand her leap. By her own account, the very purpose of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was “to make sure that the other citizens, the black citizens, would have the same [civil rights] as the white citizens.” It was designed to remedy a situation in which “people, based on their race, were being treated unequally” by the states. And the 14th Amendment had the same goal.

The proposition that the 14th Amendment requires that the government be color-blind is open to challenge both as to what exactly that means and to whether that meaning is well founded. But Jackson seems to think that the color-blind position is somehow at odds with the fact that the 14th Amendment was designed to ensure equal treatment—when that of course is exactly what advocates of the color-blind position maintain the 14th Amendment requires.

Jackson seems to confuse herself with her own terms. Yes, of course, the Framers can be said to have adopted the 14th Amendment “in a race conscious way”—if that means that the central purpose of the 14th Amendment was to ensure that freed slaves received equal treatment in fundamental ways. By its plain text, the 14th Amendment ensures that states shall not “abridge the privileges or immunities” of citizens, irrespective of their race; shall not “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” irrespective of the person’s race; and shall not deny any person the “equal protection of the laws,” irrespective of the person’s race.

But how is this elementary recognition at all at odds with the color-blind position? In his great dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the first Justice Harlan celebrates that the post-Civil War Amendments “removed the race line from our governmental systems.” In his very next sentence, he states that these amendments had “a common purpose, namely, to secure to a race recently emancipated, a race that through many generations have been held in slavery, all the civil rights that the [white] race enjoy.” (Internal quote omitted.) He of course goes on to characterize the amended Constitution as “color-blind.” On what conceivable basis are we to think that there is any tension among Harlan’s statements?

Insofar as Jackson might be arguing that the 14th Amendment allows race-conscious remedies, she doesn’t touch on the critical questions of what counts as a race-conscious remedy and when such a remedy is permissible. Some scholars cite the Freedmen’s Bureau Acts as evidence that the Equal Protection Clause does not require colorblindness. But as law professor Michael Rappaport points out in “Originalism and the Colorblind Constitution,” even apart from the question whether those Acts inform the meaning of the 14th Amendment, they gave benefits to freedmen and refugees (most of whom were white) not on the basis of race but on the basis of the oppression and hardship they were enduring. Further, Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas—leading proponents of colorblindness—agree that states can act to provide benefits to blacks (or persons of other races and ethnicities) when they have been victims of discrimination.

The usual suspects are going gaga over Justice Jackson’s remarks. But neither they nor she appear to understand the position they think they are contesting.

Supreme Court vacates controversial Massachusetts gun control law
The Massachusetts gun control law places strict restrictions on the ability to purchase and possess handguns

The Supreme Court ordered a lower court ruling on a Massachusetts gun control law to be vacated and directed a lower court to reconsider the case.

The case in question, Morin v. Lyver, centers around a controversial Massachusetts law that imposes strict restrictions on the possession and purchase of handguns, including the need for a license in order to purchase or possess a pistol. The law also includes a lifetime ban on purchasing handguns on anyone convicted of a nonviolent misdemeanor involving the possession or use of guns.

The U.S. District Court of Massachusetts originally found the law constitutional, but the Supreme Court on Monday ordered that ruling vacated and the case “remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit for further consideration in light of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen.”

The case, a 6-3 ruling earlier this year, struck down a New York law that required people to demonstrate “proper cause” to obtain a concealed handgun permit.

“The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,’” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority at the time. “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.”

The case was considered a landmark ruling by the court, opening up the potential for new challenges to state and local restrictions on guns.

Monday’s order to vacate the lower court ruling and have the case reheard was unsigned by the justices, and there were no dissents.

The Supreme Court began its new term Monday and is expected to make decisions on key cases surrounding voting rights, affirmative action and religious freedom.

SCOTUS turns away challenges to Trump-imposed ban on bump stocks

The Trump administration-imposed ban on bump stocks, crafted through ATF regulations instead of actual legislation, will remain in effect for the foreseeable future after the Supreme Court turned away two challenges to the ban that had been winding their way through the courts since shortly after the ban was imposed in 2019.

The Court declined to intervene to stop the administrative action from taking effect several years ago, but Second Amendment activists and gun rights groups continued to challenge the ban in the years since, and last week justices took up the two cases in conference. Monday’s order list didn’t contain the good news that 2A advocates were hoping for. Instead, the Court rejected the challenges without dissent from any of the six justices who voted earlier this year to overturn New York’s “may issue” carry laws in NYSRPA v. Bruen.

The bump stocks challenge, however, did not deal directly with the scope of the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment. The challengers instead said the government did not have authority to ban bump stocks under the National Firearms Act, a law enacted in 1934 to regulate machine guns. In 1968, the Gun Control Act expanded the definition of machine gun to include accessories “for use in converting a weapon” into a machine gun, and the ATF concluded when it issued the ban that bump stocks meet that definition.

The groups challenging the ban said the legal definition of machine gun has been distorted beyond recognition and argue that courts should not defer to the federal agency’s interpretation.

The court turned away two related appeals, one brought by Clark Aposhian, a Utah gun lobbyist who had purchased a bump stock before the ban took effect, and another led by Gun Owners of America and other gun rights groups. Lower courts upheld the ban, although judges on the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals were divided in both cases.

To say this is a disappointing result would be putting it mildly, and there most certainly will be consequences to the justices’ refusal to hear either case. The Biden administration has already used the same executive authority that then-President Trump used to direct the ATF to craft its bump stock ban to target unfinished frames and receivers sold in DIY gun-making kits, and the Court’s inaction will only embolden anti-gun officials and the gun control lobby to further abuse the scope of executive branch authority to impose even more gun control laws that don’t have enough support to win congressional approval.

The decision is also very bad news for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who lawfully purchased bump stocks before the ATF suddenly reversed course and declared them to be machine guns. Possession of a bump stock is now the same as possessing a machine gun in terms of federal law, which makes any gun owner who still owns one of the devices subject to a $250,000 fine and the possibility of up to a decade in federal prison.

While the Supreme Court will have other opportunities to weigh in on executive branch overreach that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms, unfortunately that’s because there are other areas of infringement taking place. Not only are the ATF’s new rules on frames and receivers being challenged in court, but the pending rules that could turn millions of AR-style pistols equipped with shoulder braces into short-barreled rifles subject to the registration provisions of the National Firearms Act are also facing litigation. Still, the gun control lobby and the Biden administration are almost certain to take advantage of today’s inaction by SCOTUS, and with gun control groups already lobbying behind the scenes for the ATF to regulate AR-15s and other semi-automatic firearms as if they’re machine guns as well, the ATF could soon take aim at the tens of millions of modern sporting rifles in the hands of gun owners… not to mention the lives and liberties of those gun owners themselves.

SAF Sues to Block Connecticut’s ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

From the Second Amendment Foundation . . .

The Second Amendment Foundation today filed suit in federal district court, challenging the ban on so-called “assault weapons” in Connecticut, and asking for declaratory and injunctive relief.

SAF is joined by the Connecticut Citizens Defense League and three private citizens, Eddie Grant, Jr., Jennifer Hamilton, and Michael Stiefel. Named as defendants are Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, plus James Rovella, commissioner of the state’s Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection; Chief State’s Attorney Patrick Griffin and several other officials. Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Doug Dubitsky of North Windham, Conn., Craig C. Fishbein of Wallingford, Conn., and Cameron L. Atkinson of New Haven.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut. 

Connecticut’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” dates back to 1993. The state criminalizes the possession, sale or transfer of such firearms—about 160 guns named in four subsections—even though many of these guns are in common use across the country. 

“The ban was previously upheld, but that was before the Supreme Court handed down its Bruen ruling earlier this year,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “That landmark decision eliminated the ‘two-part test’ which included an interest-balancing provision that didn’t pass constitutional muster.”

According to the lawsuit, the current ban deprives “responsible citizens of their Second Amendment rights under the guise of providing a panacea for social problems that Connecticut remains unable to solve.” 

Gottlieb said there is no historical foundation for such a ban, and the complaint actually details the historical development of firearms including repeating rifles developed and manufactured in Connecticut and elsewhere. The lawsuit also mentions incidents in which modern semiautomatic rifles were used by private citizens to stop violent crimes.

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Rob Romano

The lawsuit complains about an advertisement for a handguard:

Families of three Uvalde shooting survivors sue school district, gun makers, city officials and others

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“brazen and provocative marketing”Image
The lawsuit says that AR-15s “are unsuited for home defense, recreation, or casual use and possession.”Image
The lawsuit says the gun store should have known one of its customers would be a mass shooter because they were “always alone and quiet”:Image
According to the lawsuit, Daniel Defense’s guns are weapons of war, but their advertisements are misleading because they use military imageryImage
The lawsuit says that “AR-15 style rifles, rapid-fire trigger systems, and high-capacity magazines are used by most often by young adults in mass shootings.”Image
The lawsuit says that “AR-15 style rifles destroy human bodies, limbs, organs, and tissue, pulverize the human body, explode, and cause immediate death.”Image

• • •

Analysis: Federal Judge Charts Path to Upholding Felon Gun Bans

We now have a new framework for how the federal prohibition on felons owning guns could be constitutional.

District Judge David Counts of Western Texas upheld the conviction ban this week. That’s despite the fact that he struck down the federal ban on people indicted for felonies receiving firearms just a few days beforehand. And he did it under the Supreme Court’s Bruen standard, making him among the first to apply it to federal law.

His logic will sound familiar to anyone who followed his opinion in the indictment case. After calling into question the constitutionality of the indictment ban under Bruen’s text-and-tradition standard, he did the same for the conviction ban.

“Whether this Nation has a history of disarming felons is arguably unclear—it certainly isn’t clearly ‘longstanding,’” Counts said in that ruling, dismissing a claim made in the Supreme Court’s landmark Heller decision.

However, he also outlined how he believed the conviction ban could be constitutional under the Bruen test even without a historical gun law as an analogue. Instead of relying on gun laws, Counts argued, it is better to look at how groups have been excluded from the political rights afforded to “the people.” Those historical examples provide a better guide, he said.

And now, just a few days after laying out his hypothetical test for the convicted felon prohibition, he has applied it in practice. He relied on the fact that governments in the early days of the republic prohibited people from voting if they had been convicted of certain crimes and those inciting people to violence could be prohibited from assembling in public.

“Indeed, there was a ‘longstanding’ historical tradition from the time of ratification that those convicted of a crime could be excluded from the right to vote,” Counts wrote. “For example, one year after the Second Amendment’s ratification, Kentucky’s Constitution stated, ‘[l]aws shall be made to exclude from… suffrage those who thereafter be convicted of bribery, perjury, forgery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.’ Vermont’s Constitution followed one year later, authorizing the removal of voting rights from those engaged in bribery or corruption during elections. As of 2022, only two states and the District of Columbia do not restrict felons’ voting rights.”

This framework is similar in some respects to one used by Justice Amy Coney Barrett in Kanter v. Barr. Barrett argued in her dissent that those convicted of felonies could be prohibited from owning guns (though only if they committed violent felonies) because there was a tradition of barring dangerous groups from gun ownership as evidenced by early republic bans on Native Americans and Catholics owning guns. New York has sought to use the same argument to defend its gun laws in court.

Of course, the main problem with the Barrett approach is it relies exclusively on bigoted gun bans and attempts to generalize and sterilize them as applying to those early Americans considered “dangerous.” But it is highly questionable why the bans presented as evidence for this theory only fell along racial and religious lines. It seems dangerousness was playing a secondary role in those particular bans.

The Counts approach is not as susceptible to that pitfall. Clearly blacks, other minorities, and women were also excluded from protections afforded to “the people” in the founding era. Certainly, they were denied the right to vote in nearly all circumstances, and blacks in particular were denied all of their rights.

In fact, people in the founding era were as likely to be excluded from protections afforded to “the people” as they were to be included in them. So, relying on that approach for justifying modern gun bans has the potential to result in a fairly broad reading of what’s permissible under the Second Amendment.

Still, the Counts approach does at least provide some examples of longstanding rights restrictions that are based on a person’s criminal actions rather than their race or creed. So, it has a bit more to stand on.

Although, there are other weaknesses too. The number of crimes covered under modern felony laws dwarfs the number in the founding era. While the analogue of felons being prohibited from voting seems to fit fairly well with felons being barred from owning guns, the ban on inciting speech isn’t really the same since it isn’t a permanent ban on protesting for the offender.

It’s likely federal courts will refine the Counts approach if they do adopt it as a framework moving forward. His framework isn’t without its problems, and it’s among the first attempt at reconciling federal gun prohibitions with the Bruen standard. But it has the potential to become very influential among Counts’ piers moving forward.

Trial Date Set for Washington’s Ban on High-Capacity Gun Magazine Sales

A federal judge in Seattle has scheduled a trial to start more than a year from now regarding the legal challenge to Washington state’s new restrictions on high-capacity gun magazines.

Judge David Estudillo of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington set Dec. 4, 2023, as the opening day for what is scheduled as an eight-day bench trial regarding the Second Amendment Foundation’s lawsuit against the state’s ban on sales of new large-capacity magazines for handguns and rifles.

The law, which took effect on July 1, prohibits the sale of gun magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds, along with the manufacturing, distribution or import of such magazines in Washington.

Any high-capacity magazines owned as of July 1, 2022, are unaffected by the law.

“We’re asking the court to declare Washington’s ban on original capacity magazines to be unconstitutional under the Second and Fourteenth amendments,” Alan M. Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Bellevue-based SAF, said at the time the lawsuit was filed.  “We want an injunction against the state because this ban criminalizes something that is common in a majority of states, and also leaves law-abiding Washington citizens more vulnerable to attack by ruthless criminals.”

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the right to keep and bear arms, while the Fourteenth Amendment, in part, reads “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process.”

The complaint alleges the law will negatively impact Washingtonians’ self-defense options.

“The State of Washington has criminalized one of the most common and important means by which its citizens can exercise their fundamental right of self-defense,” the lawsuit reads. “By banning manufacturing, importation, distribution, and sale of standard-capacity firearm magazines that can carry more than 10 rounds of ammunition (‘standard capacity magazines’), the State has barred law-abiding residents from legally acquiring common ammunition magazines and deprived them of an effective means of self-defense.”

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has publicly promised to “vigorously defend” the law.

Scheduling the trial more than a year out could be influenced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, in which the majority held that Americans have the constitutional right to carry firearms.

That ruling has opened the door for another look at cases against high-capacity magazine bans that previously failed in lower courts.

The nation’s highest court vacated a ruling in a San Diego case that upheld California’s ban on magazines holding more than 10 bullets, sending it back to the lower court to reconsider following its Bruen decision.

The court also booted a case challenging New Jersey’s ban on high-capacity magazines back to a lower court for review in light of Bruen.

That means either case could end up being decided before Washington’s case, known as Sullivan v. Ferguson, goes to trial.

According to the schedule, discovery must be completed by next July 10, all motions for dismissal must be filed by next Aug. 7, and a pretrial conference will be held on Nov. 20, 2023.

GOA IMMEDIATELY SUES PHILADELPHIA OVER UNCONSTITUTIONAL EXECUTIVE ORDER

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 28, 2022

Philadelphia, PA – Yesterday, lame-duck Mayor Jim Kenney signed an executive order prohibiting individuals from lawful carry at all City of Philadelphia recreational facilities. The mayor’s actions are in clear violation of Pennsylvania law prohibiting these types of local gun restrictions. Within hours of Mayor Kenney’s signing ceremony, Gun Owners of America (GOA) filed a lawsuit to enjoin enforcement of this illegal gun regulation.

“Mayor Kenney knows this executive order is pointless: law abiding gun owners aren’t the people committing the violent crime and murder in Philadelphia,”  said Dr. Val Finnell, Pennsylvania Director for GOA. “Instead, Mayor Kenney is trying to deflect attention from his failing policies and failing City by enacting more ‘feel good’ regulations that scapegoat guns for the crisis of crime in Philadelphia. Rather than take responsibility for city policies that created two years of record homicides, Kenney is attempting to capitalize on the tragic deaths of Philadelphia residents to disarm more people and create more victim-only, ‘gun-free’ zones. All this executive order does is put a bullseye on the back of every person at Philadelphia recreational facilities, because they know that Mayor Kenney won’t let you defend yourself there.”

“The lack of respect for taxpayer money is appalling,” said Andrew Austin, attorney for GOA and the plaintiffs in this lawsuit. “Pennsylvania law is clear here: Philly is not allowed to make gun regulations. Every appellate court in Pennsylvania has made this clear multiple times. Yet, they continue to waste taxpayer money by attempting to enact these illegal laws.”

Gun Owners of America will be seeking to enjoin enforcement of Mayor Kenney’s Executive Order in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. In addition, GOA has previously filed several other lawsuits in Philadelphia in the last two years in pursuit of Second Amendment rights, and will continue to fight as long as necessary to ensure every citizen has the ability to defend themselves, particularly in lawless cities such as Mayor Kenney’s Philadelphia.

Dr. Val Finnell, or another GOA spokesperson is available for interviews. Gun Owners of America is a nonprofit grassroots lobbying organization dedicated to protecting the right to keep and bear arms without compromise. GOA represents over two million members and activists. For more information, visit GOA’s Press Center.

-GOA-