"Send lawyers, guns and money. The shit has hit the fan." - Warren Zevon
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Finally! Another 2A Case Is Accepted By The SCOTUS.
The Supreme Court has finally accepted another Second Amendment case. The case is NY State Rifle & Pistol Club v. City of New York. The case involves the effective ban by NY City on transporting a licensed firearm registered in the city out of the city. Therefore, if you wanted to transport your pistol to a range outside the city or to a vacation house upstate you are forbidden from doing so.
The city argues that it is a matter of public safety and this spurious argument was bought by 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018. The NY State Rifle & Pistol Club is challenging this as an abridgement of the Commerce Clause, the Privileges and Immunities Clause, the Second Amendment, and the 14th Amendment as it applies the preceding to the States.
Attorney for NYSR&PC is Paul Clement who is one of the premier appellate attorneys in the nation having served as Solictor General for President George W. Bush. There are also amicus briefs from a number of 2A organizations as well as a number of states led by Louisiana.
The docket is found here.
More on this as it progresses.
UPDATE: I had a long chat with Todd Vandermyde who was formerly the NRA lobbyist for Illinois. His feeling is that this case is a lot more important than it would seem on the face of it. While the question before the Court deals with the New York City ban on transporting firearms out of the city, his feeling is that it will be used by the Court - provided we win - to set the standard for review of future Second Amendment cases. Given the way lower courts have been fudging scrutiny, this would be a great win if he is correct.
Thanks for posting this, John. We are in need of another case to be heard in the SCOTUS, if for no other reason than to get a feel for how the rookies feel about some of the arguments now that they are in the big leagues, to us a comparison to baseball. Plus, this case on it's face might not look that important, but it could be written to show a lot to the rest of the nation as to how they need to respect the 2nd amendment. We will be watching.
ReplyDeleteThis seems like an enormously important case.
ReplyDeleteA lot of firearms laws, real and proposed, make me think "what other personally owned property is treated this way?" This NY law says you're not allowed to take your personally owned property anywhere except where they say. What gives them the right to regulate that?
"Universal Background Checks" want you to be unable to sell your personal property, loan it to a friend, or give it to a family member. There are assault weapons laws that want to make it illegal for you to service your own property, by outlawing things like "lower parts kits". They want to make it illegal for you to "build your own", by forbidding certain tools. You know the joke about outlawing the plumbing department at Home Depot - in this case they effectively need to outlaw that plus machine tools and the skills to use them. Close down Harbor Freight, Grizzly and all the others?
At what point do they outlaw teaching other people how to work on guns or teaching other people to make one? When does it become illegal to tell someone how to convert a semi-auto gun to full auto?