Delaware Supreme Court Upholds Right to Arms

Ammoland ^ | 14 December, 2017 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

The Supreme Court of the State of Delaware has upheld the right to keep and bear arms provision of the State Constitution, which was enacted in 1987, passing through two separately elected legislatures.

The case was a challenge to the state ban on the possession of weapons in state parks and forest.

In Bridgevile Rifle & Pistol Club v. Small, the court ruled that a ban on the possession and carry of guns, enacted by unelected bureaucrats, was unconstitutional under the Delaware Constitutions Article I, Section 20.

From delaware.gov:

This appeal concerns guns and, as such, has attracted numerous amici curiae raising politically fraught questions concerning gun rights.1 However, at its core, this case raises straightforward questions of Delaware constitutional and administrative law. We are asked whether unelected officials from the State’s parks and forest departments, whose power is expressly limited, can ban (except for a narrow exception for hunting) the possession of guns in state parks and forests in contravention of Delawareans’ rights under the State’s constitution. Clearly they cannot. They lack such authority because they may not pass unconstitutional laws, and the regulations completely eviscerate a core right to keep and bear arms for defense of self and family outside the home–a right this Court has already recognized. As such, the regulations are unconstitutional on their face. Thus, we REVERSE for these reasons and those that follow.

Here is Article I, Section 20 of the Delaware Constitution. The meaning is clear:

“A person has the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and State, and for hunting and recreational use.”

It is interesting to see the logical pretzels the dissent turns in attempting to keep the ban

[marktwain]

Part of Progressive philosophy is that nothing is permanent or has a fixed meaning. The only permanent thing is the state, and state power.

Words are only useful in the service of state power. It is right out of Orwell. The dissent amounts to the essential plea that state power is absolute.

[Red Badger]

How Nice of them to follow the law..................

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

[MileHi]

A little good news now and then is a nice thing.

[MileHi]

It is interesting to see the logical pretzels the dissent turns in attempting to keep the ban

You're right. What amazingly convoluted gibberish.

[zeugma]

I commend the writers of the article for actually linking directly to the opinion. It’s a good one for Delaware folks, though it is fairly long at 143 pages. As this decision is primarily based on the Delaware Constitution, it is of less general applicability, but is a good read nonetheless. If I had the time, I’d convert it to HTML as I really dislike PDF files.

[marktwain]

I particularly laughed at the idea presented that “no one has challenged this before, so it must be constitutional”.

[marktwain]

How do you convert the PDF files to HTML?

I have been copying the PDF for paragraphs, then editing out the excessive line breaks. Takes a lot of time.

[Svartalfiar]

Thus, we REVERSE for these reasons and those that follow.

Why do they need more reasons? 143 pages? That one paragraph is sufficient legalese for a simple ruling. And having less wordy rulings just makes the plain ruling that much clearer. (I'm in TX so I'm not gonna bother to read the whole ruling.)

Determining the legality of something (State or Fed level) should go in a certain order. First, look at Constitution. Then the laws. Then regs. Then previous related court rulings to see how they explained their decision. If it doesn't even pass the first step, why bother looking at the rest? Just say it's not Constitutional, and kick their butt with a simple, one paragraph smackdown.

[MileHi]

I commend the writers of the article...

You just did in person.

[MileHi]

Exactly. We’ve been infringing rights for 40 years, what’s changed?

[editor-surveyor]

.
Since states are a creation of people at large, nothing about a state can be absolute, and their very existence is subject to public whim.
.

[marktwain]

Progressives refuse to be confused with facts.

[Lurker]

So what is the penalty for the people who promulgated these illegal regulations?

Fines?

Jail time?

Paying the legal fees for the successful plaintiffs?

L

[editor-surveyor]

.
Progressives seem to be confused by any and every thing that fails to inflict tyranny.
.

[zeugma]

How do you convert the PDF files to HTML?

It's actually not a simple thing. There are various programs that will convert from PDF to HTML, but the output tends to be excessively verbose, and not very satisfying from what I've experienced. Since I run Linux, I normally use 'pdftohtml' to do an initial first pass, and then hand-edit the HTML code produced in 'vi'. Depending upon the source document, this can be quick, or fairly labor intensive. I recently did this conversion on the oral arguments for the bakery case. Took me a couple of hours to get it into what I consider satisfactory shape.

For Supreme Court decisions, it's better because LII has some pretty good converters. I normally just start with their doc, and do minor formatting and cleanup. It would probably be worth my while to see if there are any better filters out there for generic PDFs, but I've been to lazy to do the research.