Warrenton NO CCW
New member
imported post
http://revolutionradio.org/2007/11/07/for-non-gun-owners-heller-v-dc-and-2a-in-a-nutshell/
http://revolutionradio.org/2007/11/07/for-non-gun-owners-heller-v-dc-and-2a-in-a-nutshell/
-
We are now running on a new, and hopefully much-improved, server. In addition we are also on new forum software. Any move entails a lot of technical details and I suspect we will encounter a few issues as the new server goes live. Please be patient with us. It will be worth it! :) Please help by posting all issues here.
-
If you are having trouble seeing the forum then you may need to clear your browser's DNS cache. Click here for instructions on how to do that
-
Please review the Forum Rules frequently as we are constantly trying to improve the forum for our members and visitors.
DC vs Heller
- Thread starter Warrenton NO CCW
- Start date
Doug Huffman
Banned
imported post
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/a_shot_at_the_second_amendment/
The U.S. Supreme Court had not even decided whether to take the case when National Rifle Association lobbyist Wayne LaPierre fired off the distress flare:
“The biggest Second Amendment court battle in history is about to begin—one that will have a huge impact on you, your children and every other American gun owner for generations to come,” LaPierre wrote in an August fundraising letter to the NRA’s 4.3 million members. “And I’m not exaggerating a bit.”
He’s probably right there.
The NRA wants money—lots of it—to make sure the District of Columbia’s handgun ban stays buried good and deep. That’s where an appeals court left it after an unprecedented decision early this year that killed it as a violation of the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms.
The decision on March 9 by a split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit marked the first time that a federal appellate court used the amendment to invalidate a gun-control regulation.
The district has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to resurrect the city ordinance containing the ban, which also requires owners to secure rifles and shotguns with trigger locks or keep them disassembled. District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290. The justices are expected to decide by early November whether to accept the case. It may give the court the clearest chance ever to say once and for all whether the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns, as the D.C. Circuit held, or merely affords states a way to arm their militias, as nearly every other court to consider the issue has concluded.
If the tone of LaPierre’s letter didn’t sound urgent enough, he used plenty of underlined boldface type and capital letters to drive home his point. He told the faithful a top-notch brief may cost as much as $1.2 million.
“For gun owners and NRA members, this is the biggest legal battle that we have ever fought, or will ever fight—and its outcome will probably impact every law-abiding American gun owner,” LaPierre wrote in the five-page letter. “It is a battle we simply cannot afford to lose.”
Here’s where LaPierre heads into a wrong turn: It’s not an NRA case. In fact, the gun rights supporters who filed it complain that lawyers working for the NRA, concerned the case could backfire, spent considerable time and money trying to scuttle it. The association finally was dragged kicking and screaming before the Supreme Court after the prospect of review appeared more likely than it has in years.
“They recognized this was a good case and D.C. was the perfect place,” says plaintiffs lawyer Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow at Washington’s libertarian Cato Institute. “That’s what concerned them.”
Levy, who is bankrolling and pushing Heller to the Supreme Court out of his own pocket and on his own time, says the NRA first sent two lawyers to try to dissuade him from filing the case. After that failed, Levy says the NRA tried to hijack the case by filing a competing case, then trying to consolidate the two.
To boot, Levy says, the NRA supports congressional legislation to repeal the gun ban, which could render Heller moot. He also wonders why the NRA waited more than 25 years to challenge the 1976 D.C. ordinance.
BREAKING A CASE
NRA lawyers say they’re engaged in nothing more than prudent case selection in much the same way the NAACP incrementally approached civil rights litigation—one baby step at a time.
But although they fought the Heller plaintiffs at the onset, the NRA ultimately couldn’t stay away. Its leaders just can’t afford to let members and contributors see them get cold feet after years of waiting for a Second Amendment case to reach the Supreme Court, confides one lawyer who regularly represents the association as outside counsel.
Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman at NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Va., declined comment on the case. However, he says, the NRA continues to support legislative repeal, first proposed in 2003 but given little chance of passage before the Supreme Court decides what to do with Heller. The association also filed an amicus brief in the D.C. Circuit supporting the Heller plaintiffs, and it intends to file another in the Supreme Court if the justices grant cert, he says.
Arulanandam also says he believes the NRA previously had gone to court against the district, perhaps during the ban’s early days, but he was unable to provide details. The first challenges came to the D.C. Circuit only recently in Levy’s case, 478 F.3d 370 (March 9), and in the NRA-sponsored competitor, which the appeals court pitched for standing. Seegars v. Gonzales, 396 F.3d 1248 (2005).
“We’ve been involved in this issue longer than anyone else,” says Arulanandam. “For anyone else to say they have an exclusive right to this issue is extremely arrogant. As long as there’s been a gun ban in the District of Columbia, we’ve been involved.”
But it’s not the first time the NRA and other gun rights advocates have found themselves at cross-purposes. A California gun rights lawyer gripes that the NRA argued against him and his clients in 2003 in their challenge to the state’s bar on assault weapons, only to switch sides and use the same argument to support the plaintiffs when they asked the Supreme Court to take the case.
Like Heller, the case of Silveira v. Lockyer, 312 F.3d 1052 (9th Cir. 2002), was regarded at the time as nearly a sure bet for cert. Lead plaintiffs lawyer Gary W. Gorski of Sacramento, Calif., recalls NRA lawyer Chuck Michel asking for a copy of his brief as Michel prepared to ask the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco to hear the case after a panel rejected his arguments to lift the ban.
“He said he wanted to file a supporting brief,” Gorski recalls, “then he files this thing trying to shoot me down.”
FRETTING BILATERALLY
Though the NRA champions individual ownership under the Second Amendment, its critics say the association shares one concern with gun-control advocates: Both fear that a definitive Supreme Court statement against them on the Second Amendment would cripple, if not kill, their causes.
“The NRA wants to be the one to define the meaning of the Second Amendment,” says Josh Sugarman, executive director for the anti-gun Violence Policy Center in Washington. Sugarman’s 1992 book, National Rifle Association: Money, Firepower & Fear, is widely regarded as one of the most authoritative histories of the organization.
“They don’t want the Supreme Court to do it, because the [NRA view] is good for [the fundraising] business.”
Discouraging freelance plaintiffs is important to the NRA, whose lawyers worry they tend to file complaints that throw multiple theories against the wall to see what sticks. Such cases can hurt the larger cause, the lawyers say, because they increase the risk of setting unfavorable precedents that may be difficult to undo over time. In California, they call such plaintiffs “orange robers,” says NRA lawyer Michel—a reference to the brightly clad Buddhist monks who torched themselves on Saigon streets during the 1960s in futile demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
“At the end of the protest, they’re dead,” says Michel, who, as amicus for the NRA-affiliated California Rifle and Pistol Association, filed the brief arguing against standing for Gorski’s clients in Silveira.
“When you’re trying to litigate on some principle, you don’t want to clog the case up with tangential issues,” says Michel, who practices in Long Beach. “You want to make the case as simple as possible.”
Besides a Second Amendment issue, Silveira presented a hodgepodge of other causes of action under section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 and the First, Fifth and 14th amendments. They included a takings claim and violations of equal protection, privacy and associational rights.
Though the appeals panel produced the most extensive judicial discussion of the Second Amendment to date, it went for the collective militia right and then booted the individual plaintiffs for lack of standing.
Yet another NRA lawyer took the same argument Michel made against the plaintiffs and used it to support them in their unsuccessful request to persuade the Supreme Court to hear the case. Michel says the California group and the national association have different boards and don’t march in a policy lockstep. Just the same, NRA headquarters praised Michel’s earlier work in a press release announcing its Supreme Court Silveira brief.
Much more at http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/a_shot_at_the_second_amendment/
Commentary at http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2007/11/07/the-nra-vs-the-second-amendment-2/
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/a_shot_at_the_second_amendment/
The U.S. Supreme Court had not even decided whether to take the case when National Rifle Association lobbyist Wayne LaPierre fired off the distress flare:
“The biggest Second Amendment court battle in history is about to begin—one that will have a huge impact on you, your children and every other American gun owner for generations to come,” LaPierre wrote in an August fundraising letter to the NRA’s 4.3 million members. “And I’m not exaggerating a bit.”
He’s probably right there.
The NRA wants money—lots of it—to make sure the District of Columbia’s handgun ban stays buried good and deep. That’s where an appeals court left it after an unprecedented decision early this year that killed it as a violation of the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms.
The decision on March 9 by a split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit marked the first time that a federal appellate court used the amendment to invalidate a gun-control regulation.
The district has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to resurrect the city ordinance containing the ban, which also requires owners to secure rifles and shotguns with trigger locks or keep them disassembled. District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290. The justices are expected to decide by early November whether to accept the case. It may give the court the clearest chance ever to say once and for all whether the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns, as the D.C. Circuit held, or merely affords states a way to arm their militias, as nearly every other court to consider the issue has concluded.
If the tone of LaPierre’s letter didn’t sound urgent enough, he used plenty of underlined boldface type and capital letters to drive home his point. He told the faithful a top-notch brief may cost as much as $1.2 million.
“For gun owners and NRA members, this is the biggest legal battle that we have ever fought, or will ever fight—and its outcome will probably impact every law-abiding American gun owner,” LaPierre wrote in the five-page letter. “It is a battle we simply cannot afford to lose.”
Here’s where LaPierre heads into a wrong turn: It’s not an NRA case. In fact, the gun rights supporters who filed it complain that lawyers working for the NRA, concerned the case could backfire, spent considerable time and money trying to scuttle it. The association finally was dragged kicking and screaming before the Supreme Court after the prospect of review appeared more likely than it has in years.
“They recognized this was a good case and D.C. was the perfect place,” says plaintiffs lawyer Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow at Washington’s libertarian Cato Institute. “That’s what concerned them.”
Levy, who is bankrolling and pushing Heller to the Supreme Court out of his own pocket and on his own time, says the NRA first sent two lawyers to try to dissuade him from filing the case. After that failed, Levy says the NRA tried to hijack the case by filing a competing case, then trying to consolidate the two.
To boot, Levy says, the NRA supports congressional legislation to repeal the gun ban, which could render Heller moot. He also wonders why the NRA waited more than 25 years to challenge the 1976 D.C. ordinance.
BREAKING A CASE
NRA lawyers say they’re engaged in nothing more than prudent case selection in much the same way the NAACP incrementally approached civil rights litigation—one baby step at a time.
But although they fought the Heller plaintiffs at the onset, the NRA ultimately couldn’t stay away. Its leaders just can’t afford to let members and contributors see them get cold feet after years of waiting for a Second Amendment case to reach the Supreme Court, confides one lawyer who regularly represents the association as outside counsel.
Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman at NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Va., declined comment on the case. However, he says, the NRA continues to support legislative repeal, first proposed in 2003 but given little chance of passage before the Supreme Court decides what to do with Heller. The association also filed an amicus brief in the D.C. Circuit supporting the Heller plaintiffs, and it intends to file another in the Supreme Court if the justices grant cert, he says.
Arulanandam also says he believes the NRA previously had gone to court against the district, perhaps during the ban’s early days, but he was unable to provide details. The first challenges came to the D.C. Circuit only recently in Levy’s case, 478 F.3d 370 (March 9), and in the NRA-sponsored competitor, which the appeals court pitched for standing. Seegars v. Gonzales, 396 F.3d 1248 (2005).
“We’ve been involved in this issue longer than anyone else,” says Arulanandam. “For anyone else to say they have an exclusive right to this issue is extremely arrogant. As long as there’s been a gun ban in the District of Columbia, we’ve been involved.”
But it’s not the first time the NRA and other gun rights advocates have found themselves at cross-purposes. A California gun rights lawyer gripes that the NRA argued against him and his clients in 2003 in their challenge to the state’s bar on assault weapons, only to switch sides and use the same argument to support the plaintiffs when they asked the Supreme Court to take the case.
Like Heller, the case of Silveira v. Lockyer, 312 F.3d 1052 (9th Cir. 2002), was regarded at the time as nearly a sure bet for cert. Lead plaintiffs lawyer Gary W. Gorski of Sacramento, Calif., recalls NRA lawyer Chuck Michel asking for a copy of his brief as Michel prepared to ask the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco to hear the case after a panel rejected his arguments to lift the ban.
“He said he wanted to file a supporting brief,” Gorski recalls, “then he files this thing trying to shoot me down.”
FRETTING BILATERALLY
Though the NRA champions individual ownership under the Second Amendment, its critics say the association shares one concern with gun-control advocates: Both fear that a definitive Supreme Court statement against them on the Second Amendment would cripple, if not kill, their causes.
“The NRA wants to be the one to define the meaning of the Second Amendment,” says Josh Sugarman, executive director for the anti-gun Violence Policy Center in Washington. Sugarman’s 1992 book, National Rifle Association: Money, Firepower & Fear, is widely regarded as one of the most authoritative histories of the organization.
“They don’t want the Supreme Court to do it, because the [NRA view] is good for [the fundraising] business.”
Discouraging freelance plaintiffs is important to the NRA, whose lawyers worry they tend to file complaints that throw multiple theories against the wall to see what sticks. Such cases can hurt the larger cause, the lawyers say, because they increase the risk of setting unfavorable precedents that may be difficult to undo over time. In California, they call such plaintiffs “orange robers,” says NRA lawyer Michel—a reference to the brightly clad Buddhist monks who torched themselves on Saigon streets during the 1960s in futile demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
“At the end of the protest, they’re dead,” says Michel, who, as amicus for the NRA-affiliated California Rifle and Pistol Association, filed the brief arguing against standing for Gorski’s clients in Silveira.
“When you’re trying to litigate on some principle, you don’t want to clog the case up with tangential issues,” says Michel, who practices in Long Beach. “You want to make the case as simple as possible.”
Besides a Second Amendment issue, Silveira presented a hodgepodge of other causes of action under section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 and the First, Fifth and 14th amendments. They included a takings claim and violations of equal protection, privacy and associational rights.
Though the appeals panel produced the most extensive judicial discussion of the Second Amendment to date, it went for the collective militia right and then booted the individual plaintiffs for lack of standing.
Yet another NRA lawyer took the same argument Michel made against the plaintiffs and used it to support them in their unsuccessful request to persuade the Supreme Court to hear the case. Michel says the California group and the national association have different boards and don’t march in a policy lockstep. Just the same, NRA headquarters praised Michel’s earlier work in a press release announcing its Supreme Court Silveira brief.
Much more at http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/a_shot_at_the_second_amendment/
Commentary at http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2007/11/07/the-nra-vs-the-second-amendment-2/
Mr. Y
Regular Member
imported post
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/a_shot_at_the_second_amendment/
Duplicate and merged by LW
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/a_shot_at_the_second_amendment/
Duplicate and merged by LW
Doug Huffman
Banned
imported post
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071109/METRO/111090069/1004
Either we are equal or we are not. Good people ought to be armed where they will, with wits and guns and the truth. LAB/NRA/GOP KMA$$
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071109/METRO/111090069/1004
Either we are equal or we are not. Good people ought to be armed where they will, with wits and guns and the truth. LAB/NRA/GOP KMA$$
TEX1N
Regular Member
imported post
dngreer wrote:
Heller is such a simple and pure 2A case that it would be better (IMO) if the Court heard it, rather than some future and possible convoluted 2A case. Which is basically what happened with Miller (United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939)), a very sloppy 2A case that has been screwing up 2A case law for almost the past seventy years.
dngreer wrote:
In the long run it would be better if the Supreme Court took the case and then affirmed the Circuit Court's ruling. If the Court denies cert for Heller (formerly Parker), the DC ban will still be overturned but the split in the circuits remains: both the DC and 5th Circuit's have ruled that the 2nd Amendment supports an individual right, whereas almost every other circuit supports a collective right. Because of this split the Supreme Court will undoubtedly hear a 2A case sometime in the not-so-distant future.
Heller is such a simple and pure 2A case that it would be better (IMO) if the Court heard it, rather than some future and possible convoluted 2A case. Which is basically what happened with Miller (United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939)), a very sloppy 2A case that has been screwing up 2A case law for almost the past seventy years.
.40 Cal
State Researcher
imported post
Then, why did they vote in the assault weapons ban? Why is it back on the table? I have a lot of trouble concealing an AK-47 with a 40 round magazine.:shock:
Then, why did they vote in the assault weapons ban? Why is it back on the table? I have a lot of trouble concealing an AK-47 with a 40 round magazine.:shock:
Smurfologist
Regular Member
imported post
I have to disagree with the D.C. officials and the Mayor when it comes to crime in D.C. and more handguns, more gun violence statement. Criminals will be criminals; law abiding citizens that want to protect themselves from criminals will be (and should be able to do) just that. I can say (by statistics) it is quite the opposite in VA. D.C. residents and non-residents are not given the opportunity to protect themselves from criminals in D.C. I lived in Chicago for several years and got robbed twice (once at gunpoint), and, I say that if I was able to CC, things would have been different. I hope that common sense prevails and there will come a time that I can have the opportunity to protect myself in D.C. (and Chicago)!!
2nd Amendment.........Use it...........Or, lose it!!:X
I have to disagree with the D.C. officials and the Mayor when it comes to crime in D.C. and more handguns, more gun violence statement. Criminals will be criminals; law abiding citizens that want to protect themselves from criminals will be (and should be able to do) just that. I can say (by statistics) it is quite the opposite in VA. D.C. residents and non-residents are not given the opportunity to protect themselves from criminals in D.C. I lived in Chicago for several years and got robbed twice (once at gunpoint), and, I say that if I was able to CC, things would have been different. I hope that common sense prevails and there will come a time that I can have the opportunity to protect myself in D.C. (and Chicago)!!
2nd Amendment.........Use it...........Or, lose it!!:X
AtackDuck
Regular Member
imported post
WOW! the NRA spokeswoman sure blistered the paint with those remarks! Such strong language in defense of the 2nd Amendment! With that kind of help we'll be disarmed by Christmas. :banghead:
WOW! the NRA spokeswoman sure blistered the paint with those remarks! Such strong language in defense of the 2nd Amendment! With that kind of help we'll be disarmed by Christmas. :banghead:
Doug Huffman
Banned
imported post
Not that I could find using Scroogle Scraper.
Not that I could find using Scroogle Scraper.
imported post
Well, the NRA finally stopped calling me asking for money. I told them that every time they called asking for money, I would send a donation, but not to them.
Those donations went to the GOA and to the Ron Paul for president campaign.
Guess they finally decided that their calls were counter productive to their purpose.
Ironic isn't it?
Well, the NRA finally stopped calling me asking for money. I told them that every time they called asking for money, I would send a donation, but not to them.
Those donations went to the GOA and to the Ron Paul for president campaign.
Guess they finally decided that their calls were counter productive to their purpose.
Ironic isn't it?
Warrenton NO CCW
New member
imported post
For those closely following the D.C. gun ban case in the U.S. Supreme Court, this is a concise background and analysis of the case. Hope to hear if it is granted tomorrow or sometime this week. Stay tuned.
http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=DC_v._Heller
For those closely following the D.C. gun ban case in the U.S. Supreme Court, this is a concise background and analysis of the case. Hope to hear if it is granted tomorrow or sometime this week. Stay tuned.
http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=DC_v._Heller
Doug Huffman
Banned
imported post
'Granted' would be quite a Veterans Day gift. Maybe leading to a Veterans' Safety Act analogous to LEOSA. Now there's an idea!
Either we are equal or we are not. Good people ought to be armed where they will, with wits and guns and the truth. LAB/NRA/GOP KMA$$
'Granted' would be quite a Veterans Day gift. Maybe leading to a Veterans' Safety Act analogous to LEOSA. Now there's an idea!
Either we are equal or we are not. Good people ought to be armed where they will, with wits and guns and the truth. LAB/NRA/GOP KMA$$
AbNo
Regular Member
imported post
BarryKirk wrote:
Well, if they'd quit compromising our rights away, I might join them.
BarryKirk wrote:
Well, if they'd quit compromising our rights away, I might join them.
TEX1N
Regular Member
imported post
Very good article.
We are starting to get a lot of Heller threads on OCDO, it's kind of getting hard to keep up with them all!
Very good article.
We are starting to get a lot of Heller threads on OCDO, it's kind of getting hard to keep up with them all!
TEX1N
Regular Member
imported post
AbNo wrote:
A Shot at the Second Amendment: If the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a right to bear arms, the decision may be in spite of the powerful NRA gun lobby—not because of it
AbNo wrote:
Exactly! In this thread, Doug Huffman posted the following article that outlines the ways in which the NRA has tried to sabotage Heller from it's inception. Frankly, it's disgusting if you ask me.
A Shot at the Second Amendment: If the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a right to bear arms, the decision may be in spite of the powerful NRA gun lobby—not because of it