Alan Gura has revealed his next move. This is an interesting case, involving North Carolina’s emergency powers provision, which appears very broad:
In February 2010, the City of King and Stokes County declared a state of emergency due to heavy snowfall and local power outages. The proclamation from the City of King forbade the sale or purchase of firearms and ammunition, as well as the possession of firearms and ammunition off an individual’s premises. If you had a North Carolina Concealed Handgun Permit, it didn’t matter as the state of emergency proclamation superseded it.
This will be interesting to watch, especially after the election. One of NRA’s legislative priorities has been fixing emergency powers provisions in states that have had bad ones. Democratic control of the North Carolina legislature, with anti-gun reps heading up key committees, has prevented substantial improvement in North Carolina law to date. If the North Carolina legislature flips to Republican control, I would expect NRA to move for a legislative fix. I’m not sure if that would moot this case or not. Either way, there’s no reason to not use the Courts, and Gura is always very careful about putting together good cases that win. It’ll be interesting to see how this one plays out.
This is an interesting case, and I think, a winner, but, not at all an interesting case to those of us is other states without such provisions. Not that injustice anywhere is acceptable, of course, but I don’t see this being as important a case as the last few.
That comment came out nonsensical. My point is that the scope of this case seems considerably more limited than the previous two.
If nothing else, it should drive home the point that shenanigans like the hurricane Katrina gun grab won’t be tolerated, and will probably subject the perpetrators to suits for civil rights violations.
I wonder why not go after the Sullivan Law?
An interesting question. Perhaps teeing up in a jurisdiction where the courts will be friendly to the petitioners to get a positive precedent?
Keep in mind that Alan Gura isn’t a gunnie himself. I think he owns a gun, but I’m not sure. When I saw him speak, he didn’t really seem to care all that much about guns themselves.
What he IS interested in, though, is civil rights. The impression I got is that he sees gun laws as the easiest method of attacking laws abridging civil rights. I’m sure he’s happy to have won McDonald, but I think his real goal was to overturn Slaughterhouse, not to strike down Chicago’s law.
For now, he’s involved with gun cases. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if his major future cases involve other parts of the Constitution instead, though.
After reading the Alito’s opinion in McDonald, two things come to mind.
First, Alito wrote, to paraphrase, that the right of self-defense is “most acute” in the home. Alan now wants to take the contours of the right of self-defense beyond the front door, off the porch and into the sidewalk. If successful, he could get an extension of the right to both “keep” and “bear” outside the home. Maybe more importantly, given the draconian nature of the law, he’s also looking for a nibble at getting a Federal court to apply an explicit level of scrutiny to the right.
Second thought is that maybe there’s some bad precedent in the 4th Circuit that a win in this case would address and overturn (haven’t done that research yet).
Either way (or whatever the 3rd option is), go get ’em!
Alan: Fish > Barrel – I think he knows what he’s doing. Wikipedia has him as a gun owner, but he’s not a OCD gunnie – he did come to the Gun Blogger Rendezvous. And he was born in Tel Aviv so he knows the value and necessity of armed self-defense.
I dont get the value in this, bt will no begrudge gura anything.
BTW. doesnt it see, like he has been kind of quiet after the ruling?
I’m sure he’s busy working on filing new cases. Think of this as a race. The McDonald decision is the starter pistol. There are a lot of whack jobs and nut cases who are going to bring weird and goofy cases that won’t accomplish anything except closing doors with bad precedent. You have to beat all those people and get your case out front. I’m betting that’s what Mr. Gura is up to currently.
The more I’m thinking about it, the more I want someone to make a federal case out of the NJ.gov inability to follow their own laws in regards time limits. Preferably go after them entirely as infringing (30/45 days is ridiculous).
That’s where I lived for several years growing up. Glad this case is still alive. Man, around here they were talking about lynching the mayor!
Anyway, didn’t the Feds pass a law in the aftermath of Katrina that forbade seizures? Still a bad law that needs changed.
>And he was born in Tel Aviv so he knows the value and >necessity of armed self-defense.
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Not aware of the Tel-Aviv Bubble, are you?