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Post-Heller case on Lautenberg matter
At the Volokh Conspiracy, Gene Volokh has a posting on a rather thinly reasoned District Court case, involving a gun possessor who had a misdemeanor DV conviction. The court does little more than cite other post Heller district court decisions upholding other restrictions (e.g., felon in possession) in concluding that there is no 2A problem.
The comments are interesting, one of them pointing to the Defendant's motion to dismiss, which is as thin as the opinion, basically a bunch of quotes from Heller and then a note that Defendant was convicted only of a misdemeanor. Rather illustrative of the worries of many (including me) prior to Heller, that a 2A case might reach the Court on very flimsy arguments in a criminal case.
Also as some comments point out, district courts have massive dockets, and a natural inclination to duck complex legal issues -- those will be for the Circuit Courts to figure out. I spent part of today in a pretrial conference in the local US District Court, on a civil case. The judge reportedly has over 500 cases on his docket, mostly criminal and subject to deadlines. We needed two weeks for a civil trial, and got set for next March, unless a six week criminal trial that he has set cancels out. This is after all discovery and major motions have been dealt with, and everyone is ready to roll.
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The federal district court dockets in the big urban districts are freaking jokes. Judges and magistrates swamped to the gills with routine criminal cases (using a firearm that has traveled in interstate commerce to rob, essentially, a local grocery store; and other such nonsense) that the Congress in its wisdom has turned into federal offenses.
Heller and Lautenberg:
I command a National Guard infantry battalion in Oregon. I just got a tasking to post a copy of 922(g) on all my arms room doors, and it kind of ticked me off. I'm a family law attorney in civilian life, so I am painfully aware of FAPA restraining orders and DV misdemeanors and their consequences. What do you think about Lautenberg's long-term viability after Heller? I've read some of the local court opinions aroudn the country dismissing such arguments, but it seems to me that no one's really addressed the issue in detail (it's only been a couple of months, after all), particularly in regards to a rational basis for time/place/manner restrictions. Also, I wonder if our status as "militia" would make such a case more persuasive, even though Heller used the traditional definition of militia.
Greg Day
It seems like the first bear arms case that will make it to the appeals court after Heller will be Nordyke v King http://wiki.calgunsfoundation.org/index.php/Nordyke_v._King
I went to the Ninth Circuit's web site but couldn't find much about the case. Would someone more familiar with the federal courts let us know of a link with up to date info?