Could be the one
A federal lawsuit accusing the city of illegally confiscating firearms during the chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina was kept alive by a federal judge Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier denied a motion by the city of New Orleans to dismiss a suit by the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation. The gun-rights groups sued Mayor Ray Nagin and New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley over the confiscation of guns following Hurricane Katrina.
The city asked the judge to dismiss the suit for lack of jurisdiction, saying “the states, and by extension their political subdivisions, are free to proscribe the possession of firearms.”
The court rejected the motion, ruling the city did nothing to back up “the brazen assertion” that the second amendment did not apply.
“I’m delighted to see that the second amendment still applies in Louisiana,” said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA.
Well, the fifth circuit is the strongest circuit court on the second amendment. Excellent. More:
In April, police made about 700 weapons available to owners. Those seeking a weapon must bring either a bill of sale or an affidavit with the weapon’s serial number, which LaPierre called an “impossible requirement.”
It is an impossible requirement. More folks should have turned theirs in ammo first.
This could be the case that gets to the supreme court. The fifth circuit has stated the second amendment means what it says. Other circuits have not. Cold get interesting.
August 17th, 2006 at 7:47 am
I’m a little surprised that this is in federal court at all, since the Louisiana constitution has a stronger and clearer RKBA.
August 17th, 2006 at 8:33 am
I’m not surprised it’s in federal court, but would be surprised if the federal violation was the only one asserted. That’s not clear from the story, but assuming the lawsuit challenges the city under both the state and federal constitutions, it may be necessary to keep the federal question alive for the federal court to have jurisdiction to hear the case. [I say “may” because a question of federal law is not the only possible basis for federal court jurisdiction here, just the most intuitive one.]
August 17th, 2006 at 8:59 am
And what if it does? Do you think that even an affirmative supreme court ruling on the second ammendment is going to just roll back the 20,000 unconstitutional gun laws that are on the books? In my opinion, nothing good can come from a 2nd Ammendment supreme court case. If we lose, the floodgates of legislation open. If we win, probably nothing of substance happens.
Then again, if we lost and gun bans started popping up all over the place… Maybe some gun owners would finally get “active”.
August 17th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Reason, I agree that a common-sense ruling by the Supremes would not roll back the 20,000 gun laws on the books, in no small part because most of them are not unconstitutional. It would, however, roll back the ones that clearly are, such as the outright bans in Chicago and DC, or extremely onerous licensing scheme in NYC. Depending on how broadly the court read the part about bearing arms, it may even end may-issue and no-issue CCW, or at least require the states to choose between allowing either concealed or open carry, on that theory that allowing one but not the other constitutes a reasonable regulation, but prohibiting both is an outright infringement.
More importantly, perhaps, having all three branches of the federal government on record saying the Second Amendment means what it says would significantly affect the debate on every gun law that is debated from now on. Take the “collective rights” canard off the table, and suddenly EVERY debate is about whether gun regulation X or gun law Y serves a purpose soooooo important as to justify further burdening a God-given, constitutional right.
A loss, by contrast, would be a relatively minor setback. Few if any serious legal scholars are going to suddenly jump on the “collective rights” theory just because the Supreme Court did; they’ll simply point out that the case was incorrectly decided, as they’ve said about many other cases in the past, and will say about many others in the future. Did any of us stop thinking the First Amendment protects our right to political speech when the Supremes upheld McCain-Feingold? On the flip side, anti-gunners would indeed be emboldened by a Supreme Court nullification of the Second Amendment, but seeing as they’ve been claiming for decades that the Supreme Court has already done that, I’m not sure where else they could go if they suddenly had a real Supreme Court decision on their side. “OK, so maybe we were lying for the past 50 years, but it’s true now! Honest.”