imported post
Bob Warden wrote:
The only facts at issue in my case, and in Chan, are not in dispute: We went to parks facilities and got turned away for carrying.
That is also not correct. Every single individual plaintiff was ruled to have standing in the
Chan case, including myself who didn't suffer the indignity of having to go through the hoop of "getting banned" from Seattle Parks facility, namely myself.
Seattle only vigorously started going after the
Chan plaintiff's standing after you so publicly and gratuitously questioned our standing and started stating that we did not have standing because of
Heller (therefor assuming that the
Navegar standard applied nationwide). If you were a good federal appellate attorney on constitutional issues, you would know that
Navegar only applied to the District of Columbia.
Seattle only started making noises about appealing the ruling you made "unpersuasive" arguments to Judge Pechman (her words, not mine) in your oral argument on 3/2/2010. Since I don't have the transcripts, perhaps you can answer this question: Did Judge Pechman indicate in court that she was going to rule against you on the state constitutional arguments from the way she was speaking with both parties?
Also, an inquiry:
Whether or not you support me or approve of my methods, I am spending my own time and money fighting for the right to bear arms for EVERYONE, not just for a state fortunate enough to have a strong state constitutional right and a preemption statute.
There are only two states in the 9th Circuit (the highest point of guaranteed appeal for you, there is no such things as "guaranteed appeal to SCOTUS" in a case such as this) which doesn't have a good RKBA provision (California has none, Hawaii's is nominally bad). Since you have no guarantee that it will go to SCOTUS, have you considered the effects of your case on
Sykes v McGinness, the current "Bear arms" case that's pending in the district court in California and will likely end up in the 9th Circuit?
Have you considered, at all, speaking with the folks in California that may be adversely affected by a bad three judge panel deciding wrongly in your appeal that the cities have the right to regulate guns on their property under the US constitution? or perhaps declaring that there's no right to bear arms outside of the home, using your case as a vehicle to do this? Federal judges, like what Pechman did here, sometimes use cases such as this to try to stick in their personal prejudices and "make new law". Regardless of how wrong the decision is, there's no method of effective reversal after a bad 3 judge panel decision (en banc panels are rare, and SCOTUS reviews even more so), and it only happened in
Nordyke because of
Heller, which was our one and only shot of wiping the "collective rights" lie clean.
Your case has a strong possibility of causing people in California and Hawaii being
unable to have the capability of defending themselves effectively in the long term. Do you have the appellate experience to be able to stare down a 3-judge panel and basically by your very presence, tell the judges if they mess up by writing a bad decision, you can get to SCOTUS and embarrass the panel by an overturn, especially when your only two times you've asked for certiorari to the Supreme Court, it has been granted?
