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Now, this is pretty brazen
I noted yesterday that NRA won its suit against Philadelphia. The judge struck down two portions of the city's gun ordinance, and as to three ruled that plaintiffs' didn't have standing to sue. I.e., not that the ordinances were lawful, but that until they were enforced it was an abstract issue rather than a case. (Note that the city attorney had said she wouldn't prosecute the cases). Here's NRA's release on the case.
So the city sets out to spin, and the Philadelphia Metro buys every bit of it.
Headline: "Court gives city right to enforce some gun laws"
"A Common Pleas judge yesterday ruled in favor of three city laws passed two months ago by City Council, including the requirement of city residents to report lost and stolen guns to police."
"An appeal by the National Rifle Association, which filed the lawsuit last month, is very likely."
"The ruling was immediately hailed as a victory for Mayor Michael Nutter and the city in its fight for stronger local gun laws by the state’s leading anti-gun violence group.
Joe Grace of CeasefirePA said he hoped the ruling would also set a precedent for other cities and towns in Pennsylvania to follow."
This is pretty brazen! I'm awaiting the paper's announcement that the US lost the war in the Pacific, since, after negotiations on the deck of the U.S. Missouri, it abandoned plans to invade the country and agreed to stop fighting.
Oh, here's what makes it really pitiful. On the paper's page, in the right margin, is the AP release on the case.
Headline: "Judge tosses Philly ban on assault weapons, purchase limits"
"District Attorney Lynne Abraham has said she will follow state law and not enforce the city gun measures.
Greenspan had suggested in arguments last month that she, too, would follow that line. But she also thought the NRA might lack standing to challenge the three laws upheld Tuesday because they were not in effect and no clients had yet been harmed by them.
A lawyer for the National Rifle Association hailed Greenspan's ruling.
"The assault-weapons ban was just ridiculous," lawyer C. Scott Shields said. "There's just no way this would be enforceable.""
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This is what is left - how does the mayor propose to enforce it?
"The three laws Greenspan allowed to stand allow judges to remove guns from people declared to be a risk to themselves or others, prevent people subject to protection-from-abuse orders from owning guns, and require gun owners to report the loss or theft of a gun to police within 24 hours."
The AP sees it this way:
"They require gun owners to report lost or stolen guns within 48 hours; let police confiscate guns from people considered a danger; and prohibit anyone subject to a protection-from-abuse order from possessing a gun."
The city attorney refuses to prosecute and as Emerson showed it takes a court and a hearing to make determinations that one may be a danger or make a protection order valid.
At least the AP got it correct that the state/city exercises 'power' not 'rights'!
Indeed. Quite brazen.
There is almost always an upside and a downside. On this issue, the upside is that they can't fool all of the people all of the time. The downside is, it seems, that they can fool one hell of a lot of people most of the time.
Thanks for pointing this out, David.
"Court gives city right..." It seems utterly and provably false to me to suggest that the court gave, or affirmed, any "right" of the city to enforce those laws.
I just hope someone tries to enforce them sooner rather than later so they can also be knocked out while Nutter is still in power. Of course, you know the way anti-gunners play the game, they'll find the worst dregs of society, and make sure they end up being the test case.
How are they not humiliated? Behind closed doors, some of them have GOT to be embarassed.
Just like the NFA they will wait decades to bring cases. Then if anybody questions it they will say "The laws have been on the books for decades. If they were unconstitutional they would have been gone years ago."
Make laws then don't enforce them.
Make more laws because the first aren't working.
Don't enforce the new laws.
Continue until you get the laws you want. Wait a decade or two then enforce.
It worked for the NFA.
Those of us who remember Russian Premier Nikita Khruschev can appreciate the joke that Russians used to tell about Pravda, the official communist party newspaper.
It seems that Khruschev ran a race with President Kennedy. Kennedy won. The next morning, Pravda reported that, "Our beloved comrade Nikita Khruschev finished in second place, while the best that the American President could do was next-to-last."
And it's 100% true. You could go into court and swear under oath and there's no way they could convict you of perjury.