Category: Gun Control

FPC Brief: Removal of Comments on Government Facebook Page Violated 1st Amendment Rights

DENVER – Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) has filed a motion seeking leave to file a proposed amicus brief with the United States Court for the District of Colorado in the case of Delbert Sgaggio v. De Young, et al., a case where the magistrate judge recently concluded that Sgaggio’s criticism of City of Woodland Park, Colorado government employees was “obscene” and therefore unprotected by the First Amendment. The proposed amicus brief, authored by Eugene Volokh and FPC’s Matt Larosiere, can be found at FPCLaw.org.

In 2018, Mr. Sgaggio posted comments critical of the Woodland Park Police Department on the police department’s and the City’s respective public Facebook pages. His sharp and stinging criticisms of the City and its employees, in which he referred to local law enforcement as “punk ass pigs,” “bitches” and “dirty ass cops,” were deleted and he was banned from posting on the government’s page. Sgaggio sued, claiming the City violated his rights protected under the First Amendment.

“Once the government lets the public comment on government Facebook pages, it can’t block particular comments based on the viewpoint they express – and that’s exactly what happened to Mr. Sgaggio,” said Volokh, a UCLA law professor who has written extensively on the First and Second Amendments. Read more

Gun Control

FPC: PA Appellate Court Rules Philadelphia “Lost or Stolen” Ordinance is Unlawful

In another Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) legal victory, Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court ruled on appeal that Philadelphia’s ordinance requiring the reporting of “lost or stolen” firearms violates State law. The opinion in City of Philadelphia v. Armstrong can be found at FPCLaw.org.

Section 6120(a) of the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act (UFA) states that, “No county, municipality or township may in any manner regulate the lawful ownership, possession, transfer or transportation of firearms, ammunition or ammunition components when carried or transported for purposes not prohibited by the laws of this Commonwealth.”

However, the City of Philadelphia enacted and is enforcing its Code Section 10-838a, which states, “No person who is the owner of a firearm that is lost or stolen shall fail to report the loss or theft to an appropriate local law enforcement official within 24 hours after the loss or theft is discovered.”

In yesterday’s decision, the Commonwealth Court held that the City’s ordinance was preempted by State law. The Court’s opinion, authored by Judge Patricia A. McCullough, ruled that Philadelphia “does not make any meaningful argument for a change in the current state of the case law, opting instead to essentially ignore the precedential authority of this Court as if it does not exist…Here, the facts, procedural history, and legal background of this case establish that the City is attempting to enforce a law that it knew, or reasonably should have known, was unenforceable due to our 2008 decision in Clarke, as well as the preceding and succeeding case law from this Court.”

The ruling further notes that “the City’s decision to proceed with prosecution under Section 10-838a, a lost and stolen reporting law, and then incredibly claim that the law is actually a ‘straw purchaser’ law, which, in any event, has also been held to be preempted by this Court…evidences a form of bad faith and harassment on the part of the City.”

“The Commonwealth Court correctly held that the City of Philadelphia’s prosecution of Mr. Armstrong under its Lost and Stolen Ordinance constituted ‘bad faith and harassment,” said Joshua Prince, attorney for Mr. Armstrong. “There could be no dispute that the ordinance was preempted and as a result, directed the trial court to permanently enjoin the City of Philadelphia from enforcement of its ordinance.”

“The City of Philadelphia has repeatedly passed ordinances regulating firearms which have been struck down by the Courts of Pennsylvania,” said Adam Kraut, FPC’s vice president of programs. “In spite of those prior cases, and having had an ordinance like the one at issue found invalid, Philadelphia has elected to waste taxpayer dollars while harassing and bullying Mr. Armstrong, all while likely knowing the cost to defend against such an action would be too much for any single individual. FPC has, and remains, committed to protecting individuals from unlawful statutory schemes.” Read more

Gun Control

FPC: Biden Administration Uses Tragedy to Attack Second Amendment Rights

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) issued the following statement in response to President Biden’s continued push for unconstitutional legislation and policies on the fourth anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida:Shamefully, President Biden and the committee of vultures who support his extreme anti-rights agenda—the Michael Bloombergs, Everytowns, and others—continue to undermine and attack our constitutionally protected natural rights by dancing on the graves of innocents, leveraging tragedy to their immoral ends. They are, without question, exclusively concerned with advancing authoritarian policies rather than creating a world of peace and liberty. Read more
Gun Control

FPC: Credit Card Companies Should Reject Attack on 2A Rights by LA County DA Gascón

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) issued the following statement in response to Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón’s letters sent to credit card companies asking them to stop processing payments for select firearm parts, which are legal to purchase under federal law:

When the law isn’t on their side, tyrants will attempt to strongarm the private sector into doing their authoritarian bidding for them. Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón’s latest attack on Second Amendment rights, this time coercive requests to credit card companies to stop processing payments for all purchases of gun parts, is a prime example of such an authoritarian approach to regulation. However, it is notable that Gascón’s letters highlight how California’s voluminous and Byzantine gun control laws fail to prevent crime, and again make clear his policy preference of redlining the rights of the People in spite of the Constitution. Read more

Gun Control

CCRKBA: “Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrel Wrong About State Preemption”

BELLEVUE, WA – Anti-gun Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell wasted no time in attempting to create a myth early in his tenure when he told reporters Washington is “one of the few states” with a firearms preemption law, and he needs to come clean immediately, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

At his presser, Harrell—a longtime opponent of state preemption, which guarantees uniformity of firearms law from border to border—declared, “You will hear this year me lead efforts on trying to get relief from the exemption RCW 9.41.290. You’ll hear me talking about that. I don’t know how many lives have to be lost before we realize we’re one of the few states that has that kind of restriction allowing the state to govern the laws we need for our city of Seattle.”

“Bruce Harrell needs to reload his brain before shooting his mouth off,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Forty-two states have preemption laws, and that is hardly ‘a few’ states, as Harrell would have the public believe. Washington was among the first to adopt this law in 1983, and its statute has been used as a model by other states when they adopted similar statutes because they all saw the common sense of gun law uniformity. Read more

Gun Control

CCRKBA Rips Biden’s “Continued Lies” About Gun Rights

BELLEVUE, WA – Joe Biden went off-script again during his remarks to the media in New York City when he repeated two blatant falsehoods, one about the Second Amendment and the other about a federal law that prevents junk lawsuits against gunmakers, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“When it comes to gun rights and the Second Amendment, Joe Biden is a recidivist congenital liar,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “The guy just can’t resist perpetuating a lie that’s already gotten him into trouble with the Washington Post Fact Checker, earning an embarrassing ‘Four Pinocchios,’ but he continues to misrepresent history and the right to keep and bear arms.”

In New York, Biden told reporters, “There’s no amendment that’s absolute. When the amendment was passed, it didn’t say anybody can own a gun — any kind of gun — and any kind of weapon.”

“The Second Amendment did not place limits on the kinds of arms people could own, nor did it say anything about who could own guns,” Gottlieb said. “Biden is making that up out of thin air.”

Biden also restated his hope to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a federal law that prevents junk lawsuits against the firearms industry. Gun makers can still be sued for such things as negligence, and Biden knows it. Read more

Gun Control

FPC Statement on President Biden’s Latest Attack on Gun Rights

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) released the following statement in response to President Biden’s latest attack on Second Amendment rights:

President Biden and his administration have cemented themselves as authoritarians on the wrong side of history, tradition, and the Constitution. His proposals announced today are another volley of shots aimed at undermining the fundamental right to keep and bear arms and putting more people in cages for exercising their rights. While Bloomberg-funded extremists spin their ban policies as mere “regulations,” Joe Biden clarified today what we all knew to be true: He does indeed want to take your guns.

Biden’s use of incendiary terms like “ghost guns” has one purpose: cause undue fear and obfuscate the truth, a cheap tactic to force his policy preferences on the People. And we see through it. Firearms Policy Coalition is committed to exposing anti-gun propoganda for what it is, and we will continue to open the eyes of our nation’s courts to the disingenuous strategies employed by unscrupulous lawmakers with regard to gun control the Second Amendment. Read more

Gun Control

SAF Sues California to Protect Gun Owner Privacy

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today filed a lawsuit in San Diego County Superior Court against California Attorney General Rob Bonta, challenging the constitutionality of a recently-enacted section of the state Penal Code requiring the state Department of Justice to share private information on millions of gun owners in the state, with the California Firearm Violence Research Center and others.

Joining SAF in this action are the Firearms Policy Coalition, California Gun Rights Foundation, San Diego County Gun Owners PAC, Orange County Gun Owners PAC, Inland Empire Gun Owners PAC and Doe Brandeis, a private citizen. They are represented by attorneys Bradley A. Benbrook and Stephen M. Duvernay with the Benbrook Law Group, PC in Sacramento. The lawsuit is known as Brandeis v. Bonta.

The lawsuit contends disclosure of personal information about California gun owners under provisions of Assembly Bill 173, passed by the Assembly last year, violates their privacy rights, which are specifically protected by the state constitution. This information sharing also violates provisions of Proposition 63, the ammunition background check measure passed by voters back in 2016, which specified that personal information was to remain confidential, and shared “only for law enforcement purposes.” Read more

Gun Control

FPC Sues California to Protect Gun Owners’ Privacy

SAN DIEGO, CA — The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) filed a new lawsuit today challenging California Assembly Bill 173, which requires the state’s Department of Justice to share the personal identifying information of millions of gun and ammunition owners with other parties for non-law-enforcement purposes. The complaint in Doe Brandeis v. Attorney General Rob Bonta, along with case information and documents, can be found at FPCLaw.org.

“Disclosure of Plaintiffs’ personal identifying information constitutes a severe privacy intrusion that is not adequately tailored to or justified by the state’s purported research interest,” the complaint states. “By forcing citizens to sacrifice one constitutional right (privacy) in order to exercise another (the right to keep and bear arms), AB 173 is unconstitutional.” Additionally, the complaint says that “the Legislature exceeded its power by eviscerating Proposition 63’s voter-mandated privacy restrictions and amending the statute to make personal information in the Ammunition Purchase Records File available to researchers on the same terms as [Automated Firearms System] data.” Read more

Gun Control

FPC Argues Federal Law Banning Non-Violent Criminals from Firearms is Unconstitutiona

Under the history and tradition of the Second Amendment, non-violent felons should not lose their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

PHILADELPHIA— The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced the filing of an important brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in the case of Bryan Range v. Att’y General of the U.S., a case challenging the government’s lifetime ban on firearms possession as applied to a person who was convicted of a non-violent misdemeanor. FPC’s brief, joined by FPC Action Foundation (formerly named Firearms Policy Foundation), can be found at FPCLaw.org.

In 1995, Bryan Range was convicted in a Pennsylvania state court for making a false statement to obtain food stamps assistance, a class one misdemeanor. And under that conviction for a non-violent crime, he not only served no time in jail, but he made restitution for the crime. Range has been a peaceable citizen since, has been gainfully employed, and a family man, but because of the conviction twenty-six years ago, he is unconstitutionally banned forever from possessing and protecting himself and his family with firearms, a fundamental right protected by the Second Amendment.

“There is no tradition in American history of banning peaceable citizens from owning firearms,” FPC’s brief argues. “The historical justification Heller relied on to declare felon bans ‘presumptively lawful’ must have been the tradition of disarming dangerous persons.” The brief notes that in English tradition, “dangerous persons” were most often “disaffected persons disloyal to the current government, who might want to overthrow it—or political opponents defined as such.” American history, from the early colonial days through the mid-twentieth century, followed the same tradition. Peaceable persons like Mr. Range, by contrast, were never prohibited from exercising their right to keep and bear arms.

“Lying on a government form to acquire more food stamps for your family is not the type of crime that justifies the permanent elimination of the human right to keep and bear arms for self-defense,” explained FPC attorney Matthew Larosiere, who co-authored the brief. “The right to keep and bear arms is not a privilege reserved to America’s ruling class, and the government cannot support its ban as applied to Mr. Range under a proper constitutional analysis.” Read more

Firearms, Gun Control
1 … 54 55 56 57 58 … 152