2aHawaii

General Topics => Legal and Activism => Topic started by: punaperson on February 04, 2015, 09:01:46 AM

Title: New Gura Lawsuit Challenges D.C.'s "Good Reason" Requirement for CCW
Post by: punaperson on February 04, 2015, 09:01:46 AM
Sound familiar? Too bad that Hawaii is such small potatoes that none of the organizations that fund Second Amendment litigation are willing to donate to the cause here. "Bill of Needs", indeed. More like "Bill of 100% Denied Privileges" here.

As side note re the extreme state of Hawaii's unconstitutional laws re Second Amendment rights, note that there is a non-violent civil disobedience event planned for Saturday at the capitol in Washington state, wherein people will be inviting arrest by violating the recently adopted ban on open carry in the viewing galleries of the state legislature (where concealed carry is still legal). That's what they're upset about there to the point of risking arrest. And here in Hawaii we can't even get a bill read in committee begging for the privilege for the government to charge us substantial money and undergo extensive background checks and costly training in order to "bear arms" (as per the constitutions).  :wtf:

http://www.examiner.com/article/federal-lawsuit-challenges-d-c-good-reason-ccw-requirement (http://www.examiner.com/article/federal-lawsuit-challenges-d-c-good-reason-ccw-requirement)

Federal lawsuit challenges D.C. ‘good reason’ CCW requirement

Some excerpts:

The Second Amendment Foundation and three private citizens filed a federal lawsuit today, challenging the District of Columbia’s requirement that concealed carry permit applicants provide a “good reason” to qualify for a permit, alleging that this violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

According to SAF attorney Alan Gura, the city is still appealing its earlier loss in the Palmer v. D.C.case, which struck down the city’s total ban on carrying handguns. The courts have not yet ruled on SAF’s claim that the city’s “may issue” law violates the Palmer injunction.

“We will give the courts every chance to bring Washington, D.C. into constitutional compliance,” said Gura, who represents SAF and the other plaintiffs in both cases.

The lawsuit asserts that “individuals cannot be required to prove a ‘good reason’ or ‘other proper reason’ for the exercise of fundamental constitutional rights, including the right to keep and bear arms.” All three individual plaintiffs in the case have applied for District carry permits and have been turned down by Lanier because they could not “Demonstrate a good reason to fear injury to person or property.”

“The city’s requirements to obtain a carry permit are so restrictive in nature as to be prohibitive to virtually all applicants,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “It’s rather like a ‘Catch 22,’ in which you can apply all day long, but no reason is sufficiently good enough for Chief Lanier to issue a permit.”

Critics of “May issue” laws contend they are wide open to abuse by local officials. Whether the issuing body is a law enforcement agency or a judicial panel, or even just a police chief, sheriff or judge, if they don’t want law-abiding citizens to be able to legally carry firearms outside their homes or businesses, they simply find reasons to nix the applications.

“Because of that,” Gottlieb said in a press release about today’s lawsuit, “the city has set the bar so high that it relegates a fundamental civil right to the status of a heavily-regulated government privilege. That is not only wrong, it also does not live up to previous court rulings.”

“Law-abiding citizens who clear background checks and are allowed to have handguns in their homes are being unnecessarily burdened with the additional requirement of proving some special need,” Gottlieb said in his press release. “The last time we checked, we had a Bill of Rights that applied to the entire nation, including the District. It’s not, and never has been, a ‘Bill of Needs’.”