Posted on 10/01/2021 6:36:02 AM PDT by rktman
The District of Columbia has been one of the most aggressive jurisdictions in the nation in the leftist fight against gun rights.
In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in Washington's Heller fight that the Constitutional right to bear arms is an individual right.
The high court followed up two years later in the McDonald case by ruling that right applies against the states.
Courts recently struck down D.C.'s demand that individuals show "good reason" for a concealed carry permit.
But now a decision by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in another fight over guns created by the local government in Washington means it could be getting costly for taxpayers there.
It's because the judge's decision "has cleared the way for claims for damages by as many as 4,500 people" who were arrested under the now-defunct law against carrying handguns in public.
The problem was outlined by constitutional expert Jonathan Turley, who explained the specific case applies to six people, but the damages could be claimed by thousands.
"Those rising costs do not seem to register with the D.C. City Council," he explained. "The city could appeal and argue that, at the time of the arrests, it was not clear that the underlying law was unconstitutional."
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
When “Qualified Immunity”, a Fiction Created by the Supreme Court, is ABOLISHED, All this crap will end overnight.
Probably true, but any damages paid are paid for by the taxpayer not bowser or the city council. Let her and the rest start writing checks out of their personal accounts and that nonsense stops quick.
hmmm. I see open carry very often here, and also occasionally have seen concealed carry print or show when a shirt rides up.
I haven’t seen any problems.
HEAR, HEAR!!!
Violate the law or Constitution under color of authority, lose sovereign immunity.
LOL! You been to my local Smiths? Seems the only folks that get a little edgy are the caulifourkneeuns when they see it.
So, does this mean that travelers to the the DC have a privileges’ and immunities protection to carry licensed or unlicensed firearms therein?
I mean, if a nurse from another state is cleared, not prosecuted, can sue for redress etc., then can another person from another state enter and carry?
Until that is answered for the DC and the nation as a whole, its just theatrics.
Always theatrics. They just keep tightening the screws.
8/9/2019, 4:42:03 PM · 43 of 89
null and void to GodAndCountryFirst
We have open carry here.
A few days ago I saw a father with 4 daughters from less than hip high to almost shoulder high in tow.
Open carry. I said to him, I love Nevada, and pointed at his hip. He grinned and said “Me too.”
I would have loved to get a picture of him and his daughters (from behind, no faces!) walking down the aisle in the grocery store, and caption it with:
We’re serious about
protecting our daughters
Behave accordingly!
It would make a great meme...
Qualified immunity seems reasonable for police officers acting according to their training and instructions, to the extent that they cannot be held responsible for acting in good faith. But that only makes the district attorneys, police chiefs, mayors, etc., all the more responsible when decisions to arrest, indict, try, etc. run counter to the law.
When the police officer says, “How am I supposed to know? I can’t be expected to be a constitutional law scholar?” we have to look to those who can be for responsibility.
And every mere mortal who has dared say that in court has been told by His or Her "Honor":
"Ignorance of The Law is no excuse." Gavel slams down, "GUILTY!"
But, of course, as you say, the rules are different for our "betters"!
I don't think a two tier legal system is what the Founding Fathers has in mind...
If the language of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States is not good reason, what is?
"I'm a democrat"?
The Heller decision in 2008 by the SCOTUS was the first time in U.S. history that the high court said that individuals had a Constitutional right to own firearms. Before that cities like D.C., Chicago, etc had the legal right to ban the ownership of guns. In fact, Congress could have banned the individual ownership of firearms nationwide.
As many problems as Roberts has caused for conservatives, he was on point in the Heller decision. One of the most important rulings in the history of the court.
Not really. I will explain why it seems that way.
The Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court in 1857 pointed out that allowing Dred Scott to be free would enable him to carry a firearm wherever he went. I think the Supreme Court thought it unthinkable that a state would disarm its own people.
The Supreme Court decision in the 1939 U.S. v Miller decision simply ignored the government's claim that Miller needed to be a member of an organized militia in order to be protected by the Second Amendment. Instead they ordered the District Court to re-hear the case to determine whether a short-barreled shotgun was useful to a Militia (it was useful as a "trench gun"). Clearly the Supreme Court would have allowed boot-legger Miller to possess such a weapon.
The reason that you believe that the Heller decision was so significant is because the lower courts LIED about the Miller decision for seventy years, claming just the reverse of what the Supreme Court ruled; that is, the lower courts claimed that the Miller decision upheld the notion that one must be a member of an organized Militia.
The Supreme Courts after Miller failed to correct any of the lower courts rulings until Heller. The Supreme Court abetted infringement of the right to keep and bear arms for seventy years. The Heller decision finally made clear that the whole "collective right" interpretation of the Second Amendment was nonsense.
Roberts did play a part in putting this situation right but the Supreme Court has not followed up by striking any of California's infringements since the Heller and McDonald decisions. We are still waiting on them to do so.
I think you’re missing my point. We’re looking for who is civilly liable for harm caused by errors. I’m not saying a lawsuit shouldn’t succeed; I’m saying it should pick the responsible party.
Ignorance of the law is indeed an excuse if it the defendant hasn’t actively assumed culpability and lacks “mens rhea”. You need an intent or recklessness to harm a person or the state. For instance, I violated a law which was intended to stop car thieves, without catching them in the act. I was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor punishable by a year in jail. But the fact that there was no stolen car was prima facie evidence that I lacked a criminal intent, despite the fact my action was prohibited by law.
Now, if I had actually stolen a car, I couldn’t argue that I didn’t know what I had done was illegal, or even that I didn’t know that it was illegal to steal a car.
So, if a cop has been instructed that a certain act is a crime, and he arrests someone committing that act, and it turns out that act was not a crime, the arresting officer is not culpable for that false arrest. The blame is not his. The blame lies with the person who falsely instructed him to make the arrest. Even in case of George Floyd, prosecutors had to successfully contradict the notion that Derek Chauvin was trained to believe the restraint was safe; they had to convince the jury (which may have been too willing to be convinced, or unduly influenced by decietful testimony) that in spite of his training, any reasonable person would have to realize that Floyd was dying.
Now, here’s where ignorance of the Law really is no excuse: When you get behind a car, you KNOW you are operating an instrument that could easily kill someone. You KNOW that you must know how to operate it safely. You KNOW that a driver’s license is how the state is assured you know what you’re doing. When you get that license, you assume culpability.
This doesn’t mean government can’t govern badly. Licensing and zoning can easily exceed reasonably assumed culpability, but I’m only talking legal theory, not the correctness of government.
(Fortunately, in my case, the legislature had been very clear WHY the law had been drafted, so it was very easy convincing a judge that I had lacked mens rhea to violate the law... no thanks to my worthless lawyer, who wanted me to plead guilty and seek leniency.)
# And every mere mortal who has dared say that in court has been told by His or Her “Honor”:
# “Ignorance of The Law is no excuse.” Gavel slams down, “GUILTY!”
# But, of course, as you say, the rules are different for our “betters”!
# I don’t think a two tier legal system is what the Founding Fathers has in mind...
Exactly. We are of one mind on this.
I was just following orders didn’t work out so well as a defense at Nuremberg.
Clearly following orders from a lawful superior shows no criminal intent, amirite?
>> I was just following orders didn’t work out so well as a defense at Nuremberg. <<
OK, let’s go there. WHY didn’t it work as a defense in Nuremberg. Was there any controlling statute in Germany that prohibited their behavior? No, of course not! It was Hitler’s Germany and he made whatever laws he wanted to. It was because REGARDLESS OF LEGISLATION the officers SHOULD HAVE RECOGNIZED that their actions were against the laws of Nature and Nature’s God. There are NO CIRCUMSTANCES under which the behavior of the Nazis was justifiable.
So if a police officer opens fire on an unarmed person, yeah, there’s some culpability. But it usually comes down not to was the person ACTUALLY harmless, but whether the cop was REASONABLE in believing he had to act with deadly force. The execution of Ashli Babbit (sp?) makes for an interesting test case: higher-ups claim the cop operated correctly under policy. Are they culpable for Babbit’s murder? Even if so, does that mean the cop is not?
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