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To: pabianice
DC Mayor Fenty, who ordered his government to appeal the decision.

This fellow may have let his ideology run away with his brain.

Years ago, I was involved in a case that struck down the City of Atlanta's "assault weapon ban" (which of course didn't ban a single assault weapon.) The mayor very prudently decided not to appeal, because under Georgia law we had a cast iron case and an appeal would have made the case precedential, whereas unappealed it was just another superior court order and not binding on anybody except the City fathers.

5 posted on 11/27/2007 9:46:10 AM PST by AnAmericanMother ((Ministrix of Ye Chase, TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary (recess appointment)))
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To: AnAmericanMother
The mayor very prudently decided not to appeal, because under Georgia law we had a cast iron case and an appeal would have made the case precedential, whereas unappealed it was just another superior court order and not binding on anybody except the City fathers.

Yup. Happens all the time.

Here are two other cases that the government prudently decided to drop...

United States v. Dalton (Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals)

This is one of the most important, though little known appellate court decisions concerning the second amendment in recent years. This decision basically struck down the 1934, 1968 and 1986 gun control acts. It was not appealed by FedGov, I assume because a loss of this magnitude at the Supreme Court level would be devistating to all federal gun control laws.

United States v. Rock Island Armory

Similar to the Dalton case above, this case would be extremely important to gun owners if only people knew about it. It held that the National Firearms Act was "originally passed as a taxing statute". Since Fedgov is not allowing citizens to purchase weapons covered under the act (machine guns and the like) because they will not allow them to purchase new tax stamps for them, they have effectively removed the 'tax nexus' from the act, which is what made it constitutional in the first place. Therefore, the entire house of cards of gun control at the federal level is struck down. That would include the 1934, 1968, and 1986 gun control acts.

 Here's the money quote from US v RIA...

"In sum, since enactment of 18 U.S.C. sec. 922(o), the Secretary has refused to accept any tax payments to make or transfer a machinegun made after May 19, 1986, to approve any such making or transfer, or to register any such machinegun. As applied to machineguns made and possessed after May 19, 1986, the registration and other requirements of the National Firearms Act, Chapter 53 of the Internal Revenue Code, no longer serve any revenue purpose, and are impliedly repealed or are unconstitutional. Accordingly, Counts l(a) and (b), 2, and 3 of the superseding indictment are dismissed."

 

You might want to ask yourself why the NRA never publicized this case.

62 posted on 11/28/2007 8:06:55 AM PST by zeugma (Ubuntu - Linux for human beings)
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