SAF & Gura Sue DC for Right to Carry!

[Yellowfin]

BIG NEWS!!!
http://www.saf.org/viewpr-new.asp?id=300

SAF SUES DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA OVER CARRYING OF HANDGUNS
For Immediate Release: 8/6/2009

NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release: Contact: Alan Gottlieb (425) 454-7012

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today filed a lawsuit on behalf of three residents of the District of Columbia and a New Hampshire resident, seeking to compel the city to issue carry permits to law-abiding citizens.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of Tom Palmer, George Lyon and Amy McVey, all District residents, and Edward Raymond, a New Hampshire resident. SAF and the individual plaintiffs are being represented by attorney Alan Gura, who successfully argued the landmark District of Columbia v. Heller case in 2008 that overturned the District’s handgun ban on the grounds that it was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

“Once again,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, “we’re heading back to court because the anti-gun city administration refuses to abide by the law. It is beginning to appear like residents of the District are up against a rogue city government that simply does not want to ease its stranglehold on the most important civil right of all, the right of self-preservation.”

“In most major American cities,” said attorney Gura, “where the right to bear arms is respected, licensed permit holders have proven themselves safe and effective. Washington, D.C. already requires handgun registrants to complete the background checks and training classes required of carry permit holders throughout the country. It is pointless to deny these individuals the right to bear arms.”

SAF previously sued the District over its restrictive handgun registration policies, leading the city to amend those policies. This time, SAF is alleging that the District previously had a city code under which the police chief could issue licenses to carry handguns to individuals, including citizens not residing in the District, though the city did not issue such licenses as a matter of policy for several years. That authority was revoked last December by the Mayor and City Council.

Plaintiffs are seeking a permanent injunction against the continued ban on carrying handguns by law-abiding citizens for personal protection.

The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/08...y5222857.shtml

One question left unanswered by the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Second Amendment ruling last year is this: When do law-abiding Americans have the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense?

In a lawsuit filed against the city of Washington, D.C. on Thursday, the Second Amendment Foundation aims to find out.

The plaintiffs are four gun owners who were denied licenses to carry firearms in public on their person, which nearly all states permit. All U.S. states except Illinois and Wisconsin grant licenses for concealed carry, and 36 states require local police to issue the licenses unless there's a valid reason (such as a criminal history) not to do so.

The District of Columbia is a special case. Its city code says nobody may carry "either openly or concealed on or about their person, a pistol, without a license." But a law enacted in December 2008 appears to have curbed the ability of the police chief to grant those licenses.

"This really isn't about concealed carry," Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, told CBSNews.com in an interview on Thursday evening. "It's about being able to carry a gun, period. D.C. can prescribe some form or fashion or regulation or restrictions, but there's no way they can say you can't do it at all."

Part of the blame for this uncertainty -- how far does the Second Amendment extend? -- can be laid at the doors of no less an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the D.C. v. Heller case, the justices struck down the District's no-handguns-in-your-own-home ban on the grounds that it violated the Second Amendment, but they weren't terribly specific about what else might or might not cross the line.

Put another way, the text of the Second Amendment says that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Last year's Heller case dealt with the right to keep arms, but what about the right to bear arms?

The justices' majority opinion acknowledged that "at the time of the founding, as now, to 'bear' meant to 'carry,'" and that the phrase "'bear arms' was unambiguously used to refer to the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia." Also: "We find that (the clauses) guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.""

Just to make things more complicated, though, the majority opinion also says: "Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."

Permitting law-abiding Americans to carry loaded firearms on their person doesn't fall squarely into one of those categories, which has given gun rights groups some reason to be optimistic in the current lawsuit against Washington, D.C.

"We're not against all gun laws or forms of gun control here," Gottlieb said. "We're not saying that you can bring your gun to the Capitol building or the White House. But there are obviously places where you should be able to carry a gun for self-defense."

This is one case that's more likely than most to end up at the Supreme Court once again. Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed as an associate justice on Thursday, but few court watchers expect that to make a difference: as I wrote in May, both she and David Souter (her predecessor) appear to believe the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Thursday's complaint filed against the District invokes two constitutional rights: First, it says that general bans on "carrying of handguns in public violate the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution"; and second, that the city's repeated refusals to grant permits "violate the rights to travel and equal protection secured by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment."

The only problem with that approach is that even though the Supreme Court said that a constitutional right to keep and bear arms exists, subsequent rulings by appellate courts have routinely said it's so limited that it doesn't have much meaning in practice. (One of those cases involved Sotomayor, and another involved a California anti-gun law.) If anti-gun types can convince judges to continue this approach, they may be able to win the next few rounds even though the Heller decision is technically the law of the land.

Declan McCullagh is a correspondent for CBSNews.com. He can be reached at declan@cbsnews.com.

Heller on steroids! Either DC folds on this to avoid making this be national legal precedence and we get carry in DC (and Fenty and his minions choke on their own vomit from the siezures) OR we get court precedence nuking "may issue when hell freezes over" and no issue states. Rock on!

[kunsunoke]

This is a hell of a relief.

[ChamberedRound]

BIG NEWS!!!
http://www.saf.org/viewpr-new.asp?id=300

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/08...y5222857.shtml
Heller on steroids! Either DC folds on this to avoid making this be national legal precedence and we get carry in DC (and Fenty and his minions choke on their own vomit from the siezures) OR we get court precedence nuking "may issue when hell freezes over" and no issue states. Rock on!

While this could lay a groundwork, neither of the conclusions you've arrived at will come to pass until the issue of incorporation is also addressed. Until then, state governments can simply claim any and all federal interpretations of the 2nd Amendment and related laws don't apply to the states.

If this case works out for us, AND the 2nd becomes incorporated, then we've got something.

[Skeptic]

While this could lay a groundwork, neither of the conclusions you've arrived at will come to pass until the issue of incorporation is also addressed. Until then, state governments can simply claim any and all federal interpretations of the 2nd Amendment and related laws don't apply to the states.

True, but I am greedy. I would love to visit DC someday and parts of Virginia's roads go into DC for periods of times, as do some of the transit systems in NOVA. So while I love it as a start, it in and of itself would be a good thing for me. Greedy Greedy Greedy

[ChamberedRound]

True, but I am greedy. I would love to visit DC someday and parts of Virginia's roads go into DC for periods of times, as do some of the transit systems in NOVA. So while I love it as a start, it in and of itself would be a good thing for me. Greedy Greedy Greedy

I completely understand, and share your sentiment. All I was saying is that there's more work than just this particular case before such things come to pass.

[dc dalton]

True, but I am greedy. I would love to visit DC someday and parts of Virginia's roads go into DC for periods of times, as do some of the transit systems in NOVA. So while I love it as a start, it in and of itself would be a good thing for me. Greedy Greedy Greedy

Yes but even if what CR is saying comes to pass and the no carry laws in DC are shot down it doesn't mean they will reciprocate with other states.

As CR this one has a long way to go but I hope beyond hope it happens

[Yellowfin]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...uns-in-public/

Lawsuit seeks right to carry guns in public

By Matthew Cella (Washington Times staff writer) | Friday, August 7, 2009


The man whose Supreme Court challenge secured the right of D.C. residents to keep guns in their homes is back in court, this time filing a lawsuit on behalf of a group seeking the right of registered gun owners to carry their guns in public.

Four individuals and a gun-rights advocacy group joined lawyer Alan Gura on Thursday in filing the lawsuit in U.S. District Court. It was an earlier lawsuit by Mr. Gura that forced the District to end its 30-year-old gun ban, the strictest in the United States.

The lawsuit argues that the District's "laws, customs, practices and policies generally banning the carrying of handguns in public violate the Second Amendment" of the U.S. Constitution. It asks that the District issue licenses to carry guns in public to legal gun owners in the city and to people with valid carry permits from outside the city.

"This lawsuit was inevitable in many ways," Mr. Gura said Thursday, adding that most jurisdictions in the country have carry laws. "This is not the end of all gun control."

Mr. Gura said the lawsuit does not take a position on whether the District should allow legal gun owners to carry weapons openly or in a concealed manner. That issue, he said, should be left to city officials to regulate.

The D.C. residents who brought the case are Tom G. Palmer, George Lyon and Amy McVey. The nonprofit Washington state-based Second Amendment Foundation is also named as a plaintiff.

The three D.C. residents, who are licensed gun owners in the District, had gun-registration applications rejected by the Metropolitan Police Department because they stated their intention was to carry the loaded guns on their person outside their homes.

"My right to self-defense shouldn't stop at my front door," said Mrs. McVey, 46, of Northwest Washington. Mrs. McVey in July became the first person to register a handgun in the District after the ban was lifted.

Asked where she might carry her gun, Mrs. McVey responded: "Everywhere it's legal."

Edward Raymond, a Navy veteran enrolled in law school in New Hampshire, is also listed as a plaintiff.

Mr. Raymond, who is not a D.C. resident, was stopped for speeding in the District in April 2007 while he was transporting a gun for which he had permits in Maryland and Florida. He was charged with carrying a pistol without a license and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor unregistered gun and unregistered ammunition charges.

He sought a license that would allow him to transport his gun through the District but was refused.

D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson, chairman of the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, had not seen the lawsuit but said he disagrees with the basic premise.

"Mr. Gura is treading uncharted ground claiming that the Second Amendment offers the right to carry," he said.

Mr. Mendelson said the District's role as home to the president, Congress and the diplomatic corps should be reason enough not to allow carrying.

"In the nation's capital, carrying is perhaps the greatest concern to law enforcement because it makes it very hard for law enforcement to distinguish between a person who is carrying a firearm legally and a potential assassin," he said.

The Supreme Court ruled in June 2008 that the city's near-total ban on handguns was unconstitutional and that residents should be allowed to keep guns in their homes for personal protection.

City officials began rewriting the laws immediately after the decision. The new laws still forbid semiautomatic and other high-powered weapons.

Mr. Gura filed another lawsuit in March, arguing that a roster of handguns deemed acceptable for registration was restrictive. The lawsuit was dropped when the D.C. government in June expanded its list of guns that residents could seek to register.


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Copyright 2009 The Washington Times, LLC

[Rauswaffen]

Yes but even if what CR is saying comes to pass and the no carry laws in DC are shot down it doesn't mean they will reciprocate with other states.

As CR this one has a long way to go but I hope beyond hope it happens

And you know damn well they will fight reciprocity like animals.

[Yellowfin]

And you know damn well they will fight reciprocity like animals.

...And with precedence like this, with them losing the previous cases and a 0-3 record, they're going to lose that fight too and then CA, NY, NJ, and MD can be sued for reciprocity. The more they fight, the more they'll lose.

[dc dalton]

And you know damn well they will fight reciprocity like animals.

Damn skippy!

...And with precedence like this, with them losing the previous cases and a 0-3 record, they're going to lose that fight too and then CA, NY, NJ, and MD can be sued for reciprocity. The more they fight, the more they'll lose.

We can only hope