Federal appeals court overturns DC's "Good Reason" restriction

Metal god

New member
Wow didn't see that coming . After are Peruta en-banc disaster here in CA I thought this case was doomed . Nice to see there is hope out there .

Do you think this goes to the supreme court or the district lets it go ? My thinking is CA , NY and the like are asking them to drop the case .

Has the 9th circuit or any other said good cause/reason is constitutional ? Do we have a split for the SCOTUS to resolve ?
 

armoredman

New member
Holy...I gotta go buy a lottery ticket now.

So, legal eagles, what happens next? They have seven days to appeal - so if they do they set up a huge potential win/loss...we'll have the same gamble as Heller with the same odds, or am I wrong?
If they leave it alone they "lose" DC while "winning" everywhere else for now...but could they stand that loss in such a symbolically important place?
Oh, the fear and loathing that must permeate the air at Brady and Everytown right now...
 
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Glenn E. Meyer

New member
So if it went to the full SCOTUS and they found against such restrictions, would that wipe out the NY, etc. laws demanding such?

That would be sweet if it happened. However, the pressure of DC just to eat it and save the evil other states is interesting. If SCOTUS decides to just let it stay in DC because most of them don't want to expand gun rights and don't care about the split, that's possible. Or if five of them (assume Kennedy) want to shut down expanding gun rights - they take it? Then find for DC.

Oy!
 
Oy, indeed. It probably couldn't be heard until next term. But we need at least one more favorable SCOTUS appointee confirmed before this goes up. WAY too much at stake.
 

62coltnavy

New member
"Do you think this goes to the supreme court or the district lets it go ? My thinking is CA , NY and the like are asking them to drop the case ."

One of these days I will figure out how to quote a post, but until then...

Metal god has a valid point. A Supreme Court affirmance of this decision means the end of "may issue" in all states that maintain such systems, which include CA, NY, NJ, HI and MD (and probably a couple of others I've missed. Is Ct may issue? MA is kind of hinky as I understand it.)

The Ninth Circuit, to respond to your question, held in its en banc opinion Peruta v. Gore (cert. den.) that there is NO right to concealed carry of a firearm, and that therefore the "may issue" law essentially raised no constitutional issue.
The Court refused to answer whether that means that there is necessarily a right to open carry firearms under the Second Amendment. Open carry, by the way, is illegal in most circumstances in ALL incorporated areas of the state, i.e., all cities and towns, to say nothing of the fact that, except for security guards, there is no open carry permit that would avoid the 1000' exclusion zone of the California Gun Free School Zone Act. To put it bluntly, except while hunting or fishing or hiking in a national or state forest or park, there is no RIGHT to bear arms in the State. A CCW is NOT an exercise of a 2A RIGHT, it is the exercise of a privilege accorded by the State. So yeah, a Supreme Court affirmance of the Wrenn decision would completely overturn California law--which no doubt, California would hate to have happen. Appealing therefore carries grave risk that do not come into effect as long as this remains a Circuit court case that applies solely to D.C.
 

62coltnavy

New member
Oh, I just wanted to add that I was dead bang wrong about the en banc petition. I am flabbergasted. I just could not conceive that a panel dominated by judges appointed by Democratic presidents, and presumably liberals, would allow this decision to stand. I would love to know what they were thinking, individually or in private conversations, that led them to decline review.m Maybe just punting, knowing that whatever they decided a petition for cert. was inevitable? Who knows.
 

steve4102

New member
62coltnavy said:
. I just could not conceive that a panel dominated by judges appointed by Democratic presidents, and presumably liberals, would allow this decision to stand. I would love to know what they were thinking, individually or in private conversations, that led them to decline review.m Maybe just punting, knowing that whatever they decided a petition for cert. was inevitable?

armoredman said:
Threw me for a loop too - what do they know we don't?

How about this?

They know, or are relatively certain that this will be appealed to the Supreme Court, granted Cert. and ruled 4-5, making "May Issue" the law of the land all across America not just a select few states.
 

Glenn E. Meyer

New member
May issue wouldn't be the law of the land if you mean all states have to adopt it. However, finding it to be constitutional is blow to the RKBA and we are better off with NO decision. That has always been a threat with SCOTUS cases. Folks were worried that Heller would find no right to keep and bear arms. It was close.

With Alito and Roberts not being strong, they could easily give us a defeat or 6 to 3.

In the Fox story - I wish some folks would be more interested in the RKBA then birthday cakes - enough said on that!
 
I don't think Alito is going to be our weak link. But at this point, the only Justice from the Heller majority who we can rely on for a strong Second Amendment interpretation is Thomas. The rest support an individual right to bear arms that is incorporated to the states; but are a bit more vague on whether semi-automatics or carry outside the home is protected. I suspect at least one of the Heller/McDonald majority is weak on those areas.
 
Glenn E. Meyer said:
With Alito and Roberts not being strong, they could easily give us a defeat or 6 to 3.
Both Alito and Roberts have been disappointments. IMHO, much more so Alito. I expected Roberts to be a politician first and a justice second.
 

TDL

New member
At this point it is just "sources say" but a couple of news outlets are reporting Racine has decided not to appeal to SCOTUS:

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/l...un-Law-Appeal-to-Supreme-Court-449515203.html

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has decided not to appeal a federal appeals ruling that the city's restrictions on concealed carry permits violate residents' Second Amendment rights, multiple sources familiar with the decision tell News4.

I think this is a classic example of not a clean case, given DC specifically saying its goal with its law was to limit the numbers of CCL, ie conceptually like rationing a right with the per se aim of reducing the exercise of the right. Ie as if a jurisdiction in debating promulgation f codes related to freedom of assembly, or court defense of such code, had outright and explicitly said its goal was to reduce the ability of the otherwise qualified population to avail themselves of that right.

There is also the issue this 25:1 criminal gun owners to legal gun owners in DC. DC has, according to gun control adovacy groups that had been cited by DC or amicus, 25.6% gun ownership rate. With 6,000 gun owners registered, this means 170,000 illegal (mostly felony) gun owners in a population of 800,000. Since DC had already cited sources that used those numbers as a basis for calculations on gun ownership rates and crime, it would have had to acknowledge that perhaps up tot 1/4 of DC residents are weapons criminals, and that 6,000 residential/business licensees that constitute the main pool from which the carry permits would be drawn.

I am not aware of anywhere else the country where the gun control lobby data itself says so definitively there is a 25:1 ratio of illegal gun owners to legal ones.

Thirdly perhaps they did the calculus on how much Gura could delay, surmised he could push it to 2018-19, and know more than is public about Kennedy's plans.

DC perhaps was uniquely exposed in ways Peruta etc are not.
 
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TDL

New member
Who came up with that 25:1 figure and how?

The figure for 25.9% of all DC adults owning firearms is used in at least 18 peer reviewed studies, which are getting the number from the BMJ Injury Prevention journal peer reviewed study by epidemiology researchers from Columbia University and Boston University using yougov
http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/con...86.full.pdf?keytype=ref&ijkey=doj6vx0laFZMsQ2

The 6,000 comes right from MPD (6,000 registered DC gun owners, owing 10,000 guns).

DC population is `680,000. So about 0.9% legally own guns and about 25% illegally do


Wha is interesting is to look at not just raw numbers but also relative ranking of say New Hampshire, Delaware and DC from the above, vs here:
http://www.bradycampaign.org/sites/default/files/TruthAboutSuicideGuns.pdf

if you want to show suicide is caused by guns, you use the lower DC number (5%), since DC suicide is low. If you want to prove guns cause higher homicide, you use the higher DC number (26%). And if you want to argue gun owners are a shrinking constituency, as gun control advocates do want to, you use GSS of 0.17% (about 1/5 of what DC MPS says)

But that 25.9% number used by gun control advocates including within studies they cite in written court arguments, shows something for certain -- that by citing they themselves are arguing that DC is 25:1, that 25% of DC citizens are illegally armed and less than 1% are legally armed -- and they are worried about the 1% (which is both to orders of magnitude lower, and non criminals too boot) getting carry, and claiming this will cerate large proliferation of guns.
 
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dreaming

New member
The methodology of that paper is garbage. For instance, if you advocate responsible gun ownership you were deemed a gun owner. Many, many antis would answer yes if asked if they advocate responsible gun ownership. It's a crap question. Many that would prefer no gun ownership would say yes because the focus on being "responsible".
 

TDL

New member
The methodology of that paper is garbage.

Oh I agree. my point is that is the underlying number in some of the arguments submitted to the court in DC's case These numbers get promulgated as citations in academia and the papers that result are entered in arguments.

Most academic work is metastudy (taking a bunch of a prior papers/studies and using them to draw additional conclusions) or studies that use other studies data in some way.

It goes to the core problems with the "gun violence" and "gun violence epidemiology" studies, meta studies and building on prior studies: 1) you can chose your gun ownership rates to prove your argument; 2) the refusal to divide gun owners into obviously important discreet cohorts: a) illegally possessing ongoing criminal enterprise crack lab owners, meth dealers, gang members, bank robbers, and hitmen vs. b) legal gun owners

for that matter those different cohorts an their familes also exist in gun victims. and are also never divided to see what is really going on.

In the case of DC since we do know very specifically the precise number of legal gun owners and legal guns, and the DC government claimed that allowing them to carry will proliferate illegal guns and gun crime, the fact the 25x that number, 1/4 of Dc adults are already criminal gun possessors is ironic.

do you know the other way how other state by state gun ownership is estimated by gun control groups. you should read the studies. Some take murder, suicide, injury shootings and gun crimes, aggregate them and use that to estimate gun ownership. Duh! Perfect way to categorically prove: more guns=more crime or more gun violence!
 
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