The Pennsylvania Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal that ruled NRA did not have standing to challenge the Lost and Stolen ordinances appearing around the Commonwealth. This basically means that a lawsuit will have to be brought by someone actually prosecuted under some of these ordinances, which as far as I know has not yet occurred. For a law our opponents tell us is an important law enforcement tool, badly needed to fight gun trafficking, you’d think they could point to at least one prosecution?
6 thoughts on “NRA Dismissed from Suit”
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Brady translation: “Philly’s Lost and Stolen ordinance is legal!!!”
It’s weird that a law must hurt someone before it could be challenged, no wonder it’s illegal to fake orgasm in California [true law] and it’s illegal to have sand on the drive way, in California [and, yes true law still].
Suppose someone were to leave their house unlocked, tell a bunch of friends, and when they came home one of their guns was gone.
Suppose then they told all of their friends and neighbors on that day that the gun was gone and they could not find it.
Suppose they then waited until 24 hours after the codified time during which they were supposed to report the missing gun (or seven days, or whatever) then went and confessed to the police that they had not reported the gun missing in a timely way, and they had witnesses to prove that they hadn’t.
Suppose the police didn’t prosecute, and the homeowner crowed about that to the media.
But suppose they did prosecute, and that provided standing for them to appeal.
(And suppose all along, no one had stolen the gun, just moved it somewhere in the house where it couldn’t be found.)
Expensive at best, risky at worst.
I always hated the idea that you have to break an unjust law in order to challenge it. When Congress made polygamy illegal, for example, and Mormons wanted to challenge it, someone had to marry a second wife, get arrested, get the case up to the Supreme Court, and then spend time in prison, just to affirm that the Supreme Court thought it was Constitutional.
Why should we have to risk prison time just to challenge something? Shouldn’t it have been enough for this one individual to declare that he wanted to marry a second wife, and then go through the rigamorale, without having to risk time in prison?
If the law is bad, why is it only bad if someone is prosecuted for it? The risk of its enforcement ought to be enough to challenge it!
Markie Marxist sez: “Badly needed to fight gun trafficking? Oh, that was just something we said to get it passed. The point was to screw private gun owners whenever possible. We just haven’t had an opportunity yet, but the law is on the books, so we’ll nail one eventually.”