Big 2A Win – Court strikes DC requirement of “good reason” for concealed carry permit
Attorney Alan Gura notches another win against DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier.
As some of you may be aware, Attorney Alan Gura has been waging a legal battle against the District of Columbia (as well as other jurisdictions) based upon their unconstitutional infringement of the Second Amendment generally, and DC residents concealed carry rights in particular.
Having already won a court decision compelling the District–and in particular, its Police Chief Cathy Lanier (pictured above)–to issue concealed carry permits to lawful, qualified residents, Gura naturally ran into the usual anti-gun rearguard position: “Sure, we’ll issue permits–on terms of our own choosing. Terms that nobody except our rich friends and political comrades will ever be deemed to have satisfied.”
And those terms invariably require that the applicant have some special and unusual reason to be granted a concealed carry permit. This is the kind of restriction still being employed in liberal states like New Jersey and New York, and which was being employed in California until the recent Peruta decision by the 9th Circuit.
Gura responded to Lanier’s demand that applications show some special reason–above and beyond simply being law-abiding Americans with civil rights–by filing a motion for an injunction with the US District Court for DC, to prohibit Lanier from imposing those special conditions.
Today that Court handed down its decision on the requested motion–and Gura was the big winner, again:
After reviewing the entire file in this matter, the parties’ submissions and the applicable law, and for the above-stated reasons, the Court hereby
ORDERS that Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction is GRANTED; and the Court further
ORDERS that Defendants, their officers, agents, servants, employees, and all persons in active concert or participation with them who receive actual notice of the injunction are enjoined from enforcing the requirement of D.C. Code § 22-4506(a) that handgun carry license applicants have a “good reason to fear injury to his or her person or property or has any other proper reason for carrying a pistol,” including, but not limited to, the manner in which that requirement is defined by D.C. Code § 7-2509.11 and 24 D.C.M.R. §§ 2333.1, 2333.2, 2333.3, 2333.4, and 2334.1, against Plaintiffs Brian Wrenn, Joshua Akery, Tyler Whidby, and other members of Plaintiff Second Amendment Foundation, Inc.; and the Court further -22-Case 1:15-cv-00162-FJS Document 13 Filed 05/18/15 Page 23 of 23
ORDERS that Defendants, their officers, agents, servants, employees, and all persons in active concert or participation with them who receive actual notice of the injunction, are enjoined from denying handgun carry licenses to applicants who meet the requirements of D.C. Code 22- 4506(a) and all other current requirements for the possession and carrying of handguns under District of Columbia law; and the Court further
ORDERS that, pursuant to Rule 65(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Plaintiffs shall post security in the amount of $1,000.00; and the Court further
ORDERS that counsel shall appear for a conference with the Court on Tuesday, July 7, 2015, at 11:00 a.m. to discuss an expedited schedule for the resolution of this case.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
(Emphasis in the original.)
Here’s the entire court order, for your reading pleasure. I recommend a nice Malbec. Something in a 9mm.
–-Andrew, @LawSelfDefense
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Comments
Dang, sounds like DC may become a “shall issue” rather than a “may issue” if this stands.
I bet you could hear the gnashing of teeth all the way to Virginia today, lol.
Heh.
“Bench slapped”.
I am so going to steal that phrase.
Washington state is a shall issue state. It is also an open carry state. Not only that, there is no requirement for training or experience in lieu of training to get a concealed carry permit.
Our largest city is Seattle. Note that Seattle does not have anywhere near the murder rate of Chicago or Detroit or D.C. where they have very strict gun control laws.
How can that be? There must be some other factor in play. Wonder what that factor could possibly be.
Seattle is much whiter than Chicago or DC.
I know Detroit is the poster child for failed leftest policies, but Michigan is a shall issue state, as well as open carry.
And the Detroit police chief tells residents to arm themselves as the cops can’t be everywhere.
The dems still want to disarm the state but aren’t having a lot of luck so far.
I rather like Malbecs…probably the best value in big reds.
I definitely like the tear Gura has been on….Go Gura!
I agree. I have a thing for tall Indian wimmins….
Elizabeth Warren is only 5’3″.
Good news, indeed. You mention that Gura has been waging his legal battles against “other jurisdictions”; can you tell us who/where they are? I take it that the rulings must be obtained on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis.
If he isn’t he does need to go after Hawaii. Honolulu County has issued ONE, count ’em, ONE concealed carry permit and that was to the armorer for the Honolulu PD.
Oh and while he’s at it, Maryland could use a spanking too.
The Hawaii case has already been won. Decided on the same grounds as Peruta in the 9th Circuit, like Richards v. Prieto. Case is Baker v. Keoloha. Brought by the Hawaii Rifle Association.
Stayed until Peruta en banc is done.
Gura is THE MAN when it comes to restoring gun liberty. He and Clark Neily won the landmark Heller case and the McDonald case. The NRA rakes in the bucks, makes the noise, and draws the ire of the media/Democrats, but Gura and Neily win the BIG landmark cases.
If you request a permit and wind up dead while waiting, then they were correct you don’t need it now. If you survive, in whatever physical state, then you still don’t need a permit since there is no active risk… now.
Question asked on form by the Riverside Police Dept years ago when I failed to get a permit:
1) Do you participate in fast draw contests?
Oh, well…. I guess they didn’t like that I passed Lethal Force Institute -1 either although the classes usually have cops and private citizens in the groups.
In NC we get a call from our local sheriff asking, “you haven’t gotten your CCP yet. Why not?”
The Ninth Circuit better sit up and take notice. Peruta requires California to go to shall issue, but it is being reviewed by Ninth Circuit en banc panel of eleven judges, something that, I believe, has never happened before. Clearly the liberal Ninth intended to reverse Peruta, or why would they have considered it? This order should give them pause.
The auto-correct feature works its magic for all of us. Please remove the apostrophe from “it’s Police Chief” and “it’s decision”. They are distractions in an otherwise fine report.
I found that to be a very juicy Decision, with fruit notes and violet aromas.
The Left, astonishingly, is losing the war on guns and gun owners in courts across the land. But, Lefties never give up. Which is why anyone who exercises his natural right to self defense with a firearm can reasonably expect to pay a huge price, ala George Zimmerman, especially if the act of self defense is against a member of one of the protected classes.
The Left has made it prohibitively expensive to put capital criminals to death in most jurisdictions. They are working to make the legitimate use of a firearm prohibitively expensive. Use it and you may live, but your existence will not be a pleasant or secure one.
Why does the plaintiff have to post $1000?
Peruta is guaranteed to be reversed. There’s no other conceivable reason for voting en banc when the chief judge and guaranteed en banc member wrote the dissent for Peruta.
How come I knew Andrew was drinking a Malbec while he relaxed the other day….My favorite sipping wine to….
My home state of NJ now has the dubious distinction of being by far the worst of all the 50 in refusing to grant concealed carry permits to law abiding residents. It is, for all intents and purposes, a total ban, yet courts from bottom to top [SCOTUS refused to hear an NJ case last year] say “tough”.
Perhaps if you came up with a snappy catch phrase, held riot in Trenton to protest you being denied your unalienable right to carry, pelted cops with cinder blocks, and burned a pharmacy or two, you’d get some favorable media coverage and win back the right your politicians never had any moral authority to take from you.
You write “politicians” but, to be honest, these are politicians consistently elected by a majority of NJ voters, who then appoint judges who think like they do. It’s “the people” who consistently come to the wrong conclusions and inflict the consequences of those wrong conclusions on the rest of us.
True, the electorate is ultimately to blame, but my opinion is that an electorate that overtly leans Left is an electorate composed of largely uninformed people. Leftist politicians and spin doctors tend to be very good at manipulating language and blowing smoke. Most voters are not open-minded, and very few are willing to engage in a legitimate debate rooted in logic. Hell, from my perspective, most Leftists are strangers to logic, as they eagerly embrace fallacies and ignore facts.
The problem with free speech is there are very few penalties, if any, for those that abuse the right.
Of course N.J. has lousy laws, the laws were written by democrat racists from the start to keep the blacks from defending themselves. As long as the dems keep their majorities you can’t expect anything less.
Heck the Sullivan law in N.Y. should be called the criminal survivability and impunity law. Sullivan was protecting his thugs from getting shot by irate immigrants being robbed when he pushed the law through so only his thugs could have guns.
Imagine if you couldn’t publicly protest without a license, or blog or comment on the Internet without a license, and would need to prove to some government functionary that you had some special and unusual reason to be allowed to publicly exercise your First Amendment rights…
Actually, let’s don’t imagine that. I’m sure the wannabe-fascists on the left are already working on it…
In other 2A news , the Supeme Court announced a unanimous decision in Henderson v US 13-1487 yesterday that allows convicted felons some control over the disposal of their firearms after their conviction. Interestingly the majority opinion was written by E. Kagen.
An acknowledgement that firearms are just another form of property? Considered as property, your spouse or heirs have interests in your guns. Just because you lose your right to them doesn’t mean that they do too. Or that you don’t have a right to their value, and therefore have a right to dispose of them by sale.