BELLEVUE, Wash. —— Attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners in two different federal court challenges of gun and magazine bans in Delaware have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari, asking the court to rule whether an infringement of Second Amendment rights constitutes per se irreparable injury.
The cases — Gray v. Attorney General Delaware and Graham v. Attorney General Delaware — were consolidated with a third case in the Court of Appeals. In Gray, SAF is joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), DJJAMS LLC and two citizens, William Taylor and Gabriel Gray. In the Graham case, SAF and FPC are joined by two other citizens, Christopher Graham and Owen Stevens. They are represented by attorneys Bradley P. Lehman at Gellert, Scali, Busenkell & Brown in Wilmington, Del., and David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson and John D. Ohlendorf at Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C.
Noting in their petition that the high court has previously ruled that “the loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury,” SAF and its partners ask the court to determine whether the same standard applies to the Second Amendment.
“All rights protected by the Constitution are equal,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “and therefore any infringements on one right should merit the same degree of scorn as infringements against another right.”
“The Circuit Courts of Appeals have split over whether an infringement of Second Amendment rights inflicts an irreparable harm,” noted SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “The Seventh and Ninth Circuits have held that infringements constitute irreparable harm, while the Third Circuit disagrees. It is this split which should bring Supreme Court review and a ruling which applies uniformly across the circuits.”
The Second Amendment Foundation (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, SAF has grown to more than 720,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
