MILESFORTIS

Gun-rights group to appeal federal judge’s ruling upholding RI’s 10-round magazine limit

PROVIDENCE — A group of gun-rights advocates has filed notice they will appeal a federal judge’s decision here upholding Rhode Island’s new ban on gun magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

Michael A. Kelly, a lawyer representing the group, told The Journal on Friday that they hope to argue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that a so-called high-capacity gun magazine is part of a firearm and therefore can’t be regulated as the law does.

Last month, U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. refused to grant a request by a Chepachet gun store and several Rhode Island gun owners for a preliminary injunction blocking the law, which makes possession of gun magazines that hold more than 10 rounds a felony.

McConnell found that the plaintiffs, Big Bear Hunting and Fishing Supply, along with three Rhode Island residents — Mary Brimer, James Grundy and Jonathan Hirons — and a Newport homeowner who lives in Florida, Jeffrey Goyette, had not shown that they would suffer irreparable harm if the law were allowed to take effect, and furthermore, that allowing its enforcement was in the public’s interest.

The Second Amendment protects the right of people to “keep and bear arms,” McConnell acknowledged. But the plaintiffs, he said, had not demonstrated that the magazines represented “arms” as described in the Second Amendment. They hadn’t presented credible evidence establishing such a magazine as a weapon of self-defense.

He called the ban “a small but measured attempt to mitigate the potential loss of life by regulating an instrument associated with mass slaughter.”

The group of gun owners filed their notice of appeal Friday in U.S. District Court.

Kelly said he plans to hire as an appellate lawyer Paul Clement, the former U.S. solicitor general. Clement successfully argued for gun-rights advocates in a case prompting the U.S. Supreme Court last year to strike down a New York handgun-licensing law that required those who want to carry a handgun in public to show a special need to defend themselves.

Delaware faces lawsuit over large capacity magazine ban

(The Center Square) — Delaware is facing a legal challenge over its ban on large capacity magazines from a group which claims it violates the constitutional right to bear arms.

A lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court by the Second Amendment Foundation on behalf of two gun owners, alleges the state’s new gun restrictions violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments by preventing them from “exercising their fundamental right to keep and bear arms.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to grant preliminary and permanent injunctions preventing the state from enforcing the restrictions on large capacity magazines.

“Delaware arbitrarily labels standard capacity magazines capable of holding more than 17 rounds as “large capacity magazines” and bans them despite the fact that they, along with the firearms with which they are compatible, are in common use for lawful purposes,” lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote in a 25 page complaint. “There is no historical tradition of this sort of firearm regulation in the United States.”

Last June, Gov. John Carney signed a package of gun control measures that included a ban on the sale of assault-style weapons, an increase in the age to purchase most firearms from 18 to 21, strengthened background checks and limits on large capacity magazines. It also banned the use of devices that convert handguns into fully automatic weapons.

The proposals were pushed through the Democratic-controlled General Assembly in the wake of several mass shootings, including the massacre of 21 at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

“We have an obligation to do everything we can to prevent tragedies like we’ve seen around the country from happening here in Delaware,” Carney said in a statement at the time.

But Alan M. Gottlieb, the foundation’s executive vice president, said the large capacity magazine ban “literally criminalizes one of the most common and important means by which Delaware citizens can exercise their right of self-defense.” He said the restrictions “make self-defense a potential criminal act, and that must not be allowed to stand.”

The group cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the N.Y. State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen case, which struck down a New York law requiring applicants to show “proper cause” to obtain a permit to carry a firearm. The high court’s conservative majority affirmed the constitutional right to carry firearms in public places for self-defense.

Adam Kraut, the foundation’s executive director, said reduced police manpower in many communities means “there is no guarantee that emergency calls to law enforcement will bring anything resembling a swift response.”

“In the meantime, citizens must be able to rely on their fundamental rights, including the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, and those rights must be protected,” he said.

The 3rd Circuit Considers Whether Nonviolent Crimes Justify the Loss of Second Amendment Rights
Because of a misdemeanor welfare fraud conviction, Bryan Range is no longer allowed to own guns.

Back in 1995, Bryan Range pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $2,458 in food stamps by misrepresenting his income. He returned the money, paid a $100 fine and $288 in court costs, and served three years of probation.

Although Range did not realize it, that Pennsylvania misdemeanor conviction also came with a lifelong penalty: He lost his constitutional right to keep and bear arms. His case, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit will hear next month, poses the question of whether that policy, which prohibits gun ownership by millions of Americans with no history of violence, violates the Second Amendment.

Federal law generally makes it a felony to purchase or possess a gun if you have been convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year of incarceration. When a state classifies a crime as a misdemeanor, that disqualification applies if the maximum penalty exceeds two years.

Range’s crime was punishable by up to five years in prison, which meant he was no longer allowed to buy or own a firearm. When he tried to buy a deer-hunting rifle in 1998, he failed the background check.

Range figured that must have been a mistake. His wife bought him a rifle, then bought him another after the first one was destroyed in a house fire. Range later tried again to buy a gun but was again turned away, which prompted him to take a closer look at the federal prohibition, which is commonly described as applying to “felons.”

After discovering that he was a “prohibited person” even though he had not been convicted of a felony, Range sold his hunting rifle to a gun dealer. But for that law, he says, he would have kept the rifle and might also have bought a shotgun for home defense.

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