Posts Tagged courts

Gun Restrictions Struck Down In Mass and Oregon

From Townhall:

Last week, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that a law in Maryland that took effect in 2013 is unconstitutional, according to The Washington Post. The law required handgun buyers who already went through background checks and waiting periods to obtain an additional “handgun qualification license” and wait up to 30 days to have it approved. 

In Oregon, an extreme gun control measure that Townhall previously reported on was dealt a major setback. The Associated Press reported that the law, which was enacted by voters in the 2022 election, violates the state constitution. The law required background checks and mandatory training to obtain a gun permit and banned “high-capacity magazines” 

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Fishing Industry Case Could Restrict ATF’s Power

From Washington Gun Law:

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TX Federal Court Says Frames Are Not Firearms

From Ammoland:

The order does not accept the argument that the ATF can change the definition of a firearm without congressional approval. The order shows Congress could have used the language the ATF now prefers, but Congress did not.

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Slate Begrudgingly Admits Felons Should Have Gun Rights

Like a growing number of public defenders, liberal judges like Freeman, Ambro, Greenaway, and Montgomery-Reeves may think that the Second Amendment can be repurposed as a weapon against over-policing and mass incarceration. If upheld by the Supreme Court, Range will certainly be a boon to the criminal defense bar, as well as a source of immense confusion for prosecutors. The majority’s standard is extraordinarily vague: It acknowledges that some people may be disarmed for committing a felony, but a person “like Range” could not. How can judges tell when someone falls on Range’s side of the line?

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The Case Against Bullet Forensics

From Radley Balko:

Last February, Chicago circuit court judge William Hooks made some history. He became the first judge in the country to bar the use of ballistics matching testimony in a criminal trial.

Hooks isn’t the first judge to be skeptical of claims made by forensic firearms analysts. Other courts have put restrictions on which terminology analysts use in front of juries. But Hooks is the first to bar such testimony outright. “There are no objective forensic based reasons that firearms identification evidence belongs in any category of forensic science,” Hooks writes. He adds that the wrongful convictions already attributable to the field “should serve as a wake-up call to courts operating as rubber stamps in blindly finding general acceptance” of bullet matching analysis.

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Court Stops Bump Stock Ban

From Ammoland:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overwhelmingly ruled that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) overstepped its authority when it published a Final Rule that classified bump stocks as “machineguns.” The Trump-era ban was in reaction to the heinous crimes by a depraved murderer in Las Vegas in 2017. The murderer used bump stocks in the commission of his crimes.

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Courts Slow Feds’ Attempt To Regulate “Ghost Guns”

From The Federalist:

Biden’s expanded use of serial numbers is aimed at stopping the production of homemade guns, now called “ghost guns” by gun control advocates. Homemade guns have been around since even before the United States became a country, and it was never terribly difficult to make a gun with simple machine tools. But now their production has become nearly impossible to regulate. With 3-D metal printers, people can now make weapons that are indistinguishable from those purchased in stores.

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Culture Promotes Freedom, Not Laws Or Judges

From Open Source Defense:

It’s easy to point to moments where the Supreme Court spectacularly discarded people’s rights — Plessy v. FergusonBuck v. BellWickard v. FilburnKorematsu v. U.S., etc. etc. — as the thing that allowed a terrible chain of events. But did they allow the events, or were they caused by those same events? In the case of, say, Korematsu, you had a country that was willing to force everyone on the west coast with Japanese ancestry into camps. Would that country have been stopped by a Supreme Court that in the midst of it all piped up to say, “Hey everyone, you can’t imprison people for being Japanese, ok?” And more to the point, would such an environment produce a Supreme Court that would say that?

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TX Supreme Court Dismisses Suit In Sutherland Springs Attack

From The Truth About Guns:

The Texas Supreme Court says survivors and relatives of those killed in a 2017 mass killing at a church can’t sue a sporting goods chain for selling the gunman the rifle used in the attack.

The court on Friday threw out four lawsuits against Academy Sports and Outdoors that alleged a San Antonio-area store negligently sold the gun to Devin Kelley in 2016.

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Maryland Gun Stores Challenge Law On Customers’ Behalf

From Reason:

So the Fourth Circuit held today in Maryland Shall Issue v. Hogan, in an opinion written by Judge Steven Agee and joined by Judges Barbara Keenan and Julius Richardson. The court cited Supreme Court cases that allowed alcohol stores to assert their prospective customers’ Equal Protection Clause rights in challenging sex-discriminatory drinking ages, and contraceptive sellers to assert their prospective customers’ substantive due process rights. The district court will now need to consider whether the Maryland law is consistent with the Second Amendment.

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Database Of NY Gun Permit Cases Including Bribery For Gun Licenses

From 2Aupdates:

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FL Supreme Court Calls Gun Control Initiative Misleading

From Cam and Company:

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Police Reform Is Needed

From The American Conservative:

Such killings would likely not occur without the sense of impunity conferred on police in much of this nation. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a top contender for Vice President candidacy for Joe Biden, was the chief prosecutor for Hennepin County (including Minneapolis) from 1998 to 2006. Klobuchar, who was nicknamed “KloboCop” by detractors,  “declined to bring charges in more than two dozen cases in which people were killed in encounters with police” while she “aggressively prosecuted smaller offenses” by private citizens, the Washington Post noted. Her record was aptly summarized by a headline early this year from the Twin Cities Pioneer Press: “Klobuchar ramped up prosecutions, except in cases against police.”  

Minnesota cops also benefit from their state’s so-called “police officer’s bill of rights,” which impede investigations into killings by police and other misconduct. 

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NRA Challenges Florida Ban On Adults 18-20 Buying Guns

From NRA-ILA:

In its initial complaint, NRA made clear that Florida’s age restriction violated the U.S. Constitution on multiple counts. First, NRA noted that the ban was unconstitutional on its face – as the “ban infringes upon, and imposes an impermissible burden upon, the Second Amendment rights​.” Second, the complaint made clear that the new prohibition was an unconstitutional violation of the Second Amendment as applied to young women ages 18-20, who, as a cohort, are responsible for a minuscule percentage of overall violent crime.

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Gun Lawsuits Continue During Pandemic

From Cam and Company:

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