Posted on 10/11/2017 5:27:34 AM PDT by marktwain
The government of the District of Columbia has decided not to appeal the Circuit court decision in Wrenn v. D.C.
The city’s attorney general said the decision not to appeal the ruling was a strategic one. He worries if the city were to appeal to the Supreme Court and lose, it would affect similar gun regulations elsewhere including in Maryland, New Jersey and New York.
"I continue to believe the District's `good reason' requirement is a common-sense, and constitutional, gun regulation,” District of Columbia Attorney General Karl A. Racine said in a statement. “However, we must reckon with the fact that an adverse decision by the Supreme Court could have wide-ranging negative effects not just on District residents, but on the country as a whole."The attorney general acknowledged receiving several phone calls from elected and unelected officials in other jurisdictions worried about the effect of such a ruling against the city. But Racine said the decision was ultimately made in his city's best interest.
At the Gun Rights Policy Conference a few days ago, two separate opinions were expressed about the possibility of the government of the District of Columbia appealing the decision to the Supreme Court. Both were put forward by intellectual heavy hitters. I paid attention.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
One more Supreme Court appointment by President Trump, and the country could have the first originalist, textualist Supreme Court in 70 years.
They’re playing it smart. I gather they have so many years to appeal and just do what they want anyway. Probably counting on a new progressive administration coming in soon.
25 years ago I would never have been able to imagine this.
this is absolutely fantastic.
Hallelujah..!!
So, will DC actually begin issuing permits? Or is this one thing in public, and then another in practice? It is past time for Congress to step in and say that as a federal district, it should accept all state-issued CCW and issue CCW to all citizens without undo hassle.
“The issue was whether D.C. law, that was used to arbitrarily deny concealed carry permits, was constitutional. D.C. lost.”
I just wonder how much personal damage and loss the years of D.C.’s unconstitutional dilly-dallying has caused law-abiding Americans.
Oh, they won’t appeal.....they’ll pass another ‘law’, changing a single word or re-structuring a sentence and the whole dog-n-pony-show starts all over again.
The communist attorneys general of Maryland, New Jersey and California asked D.C. to accept the ruling so it wouldn’t go to SCOTUS so they wouldn’t be in danger of having the accept freedom.
Close to my conclusion. My thought is that this was a strategic withdrawal by the Left. Since the case never went to the Supremes, other lower courts are still free to ignore the intent of 2A.
They’re playing it smart. I gather they have so many years to appeal and just do what they want anyway. Probably counting on a new progressive administration coming in soon.
Here is the FAQ sheet from the D.C. government:
DC will just slow-walk all the applications. It’ll take years to get a permit....
“The communist attorneys general of Maryland, New Jersey and California asked D.C. to accept the ruling so it wouldn’t go to SCOTUS so they wouldn’t be in danger of having the accept freedom.”
I have seen this asserted elsewhere and have not seen anything cited to source this statement. Do you have a source for this? It makes perfect, yet perverted, sense so I’d really like to see a good source.
That FAQ lists some interesting language about “presumed illegal” on private property.
I bet it will run north of $400 in fees for initial CCW/LTC permit for govt processing fees (e.g. fingerprint and application) along with required training classes. Then 2-year renewals will only decrease slightly.
Gotta love paying the govt. to exercise a constitutional right. (though many argue that open carry is the Constitutional Right, and Concealed is a privilege).
I hope Breyer or notorious RBG vacate so Trump can put another conservative on the bench in time for a “bear” case.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Thing is, all the big cities run by Progressives have been dodging the explicit instructions of the court and just moving laterally to just another reason why not.
How many times already have we ‘won’ in MD and DC metro? Several from my recollection.
Not many “wins” in MD.
Several in D.C.
We did not lose our 2A rights in a day, a week, or a year. It has been incremental over a century. Since the 1830’s if you include concealed carry.
It will take a while to enforce it.
U.S. v. Dalton (1991)
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.
U.S. v. Rock Island Armory, Inc.
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.
Web searches have found other cases that have attempted to cite these two decisions as precedent. The pretzels that judges have to tie themselves into to avoid applying these precedents is actually pretty funny to read.
Good cases to talk and write about.
I knew of them. We will likely need another justice to enforce them.
Will never happen. These cases completely rip out the entire gun control regime from the roots. I don't think even Thomas is willing to return the 2nd Amendment to it's fully rightful state. The feral government will never allow that to happen. The NRA would lose it's reason for existing, and would have to return to being nothing more than an educational program for shoot proficiency. Not much fund-raising potential in that.
For later.
L
Never is a long time.
Were you surprised by Heller?
Actually I was a bit. However, a careful reading through it will make the weasel words that they made sure to put in there stand out. It is clear that a majority of the justices aren't even comfortable with Miller's operative clauses. Mainly that what was most specifically covered by the 2nd Amendment were militia weapons.
Quoting Miller:
'In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.'
This has always been misread by statists. What they were saying was that weapons of war, i.e., an M16, or a SAR would certainly have been protected by the 2nd Amendment, but because they weren't aware of sawed off shotguns being used in war (as, in fact was the case in the trenches of WWI), they weren't necessarily protected.
Yet, in Heller they made several comments about machine guns not being a part of the purview of the 2nd Amendment. Any careful reading of it will inform you that they aren't willing to recognize the true purpose and extent of the 2nd Amendment. They are nibbling around the edges of it, and we're supposed to be thankful in them finally coming out and saying it's an "individual right", as opposed to the various collectivist nonsense peddled amongst your garden variety statist. Yes, it was a win, but they could easily have done much more and not left as much wiggle room for hopolophobes to latch on to.
I understand how the court works, and that they weren't asked much more than to rule there was an individual right to keep and bear "in the home", but they unnecessarily threw in additional weasel words concerning questions that weren't specifically asked that make our lives more difficult.
You're right that 'never' is a long time, but I'm not holding my breath. I know how government works, and I know that neither the democrats or republicans really understand and fully support the 2nd Amendment.
I can't seem to find the specific passages from Heller I was thinking about at the moment, but if you're interested, I can dig further.
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