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Podcast on Bloomberg Law
It concerns the PA "super-preemption" statute and its legal problems. I only wish I'd gotten one or two more minutes of time. I'd meant to suggest that there is something curious about organizations (cities) suing to establish that organizations have no power to sue.
UPDATE: the spammer (advertising for a lawyer in India) just got clipped. Thanks for the news.
UPDATE: Yep, the attorney fees section is the important one. As far as giving NRA standing, NRA as a general rule has standing to sue on behalf of its members. There had been two cases where PA courts refused to allow NRA, or the individual plaintiffs, to have standing to attack city requirement to report lost or stolen guns. I read those opinions not as keying on the organization's status, but rather on the idea that the court controversy must be over something likely to occur and not mere speculation, and the possibility that the 2-3-4 individual plaintiffs named would have a gun stolen or lost and thus become subject to the statute was simply too low. (I think the decisions were wrong in that the odds that NRA members in PA as a whole will have lost or stolen guns in the foreseeable future is not speculation but a 100% certainty, so the organization has standing).
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As far as "clarifying" the existing preemption statute, I don't see how they could. It's already clear as day.
Every single time a case has been brought under it where the courts have granted that the challenge had standing, the offending ordinance has been thrown out.
This enhancement to preemption IS necessary because the courts have been entirely hostile to the idea of gun owners suing to get illegal ordinances thrown out when nobody has yet been charged with violating those same ordinances.
In the latest preemption case, Dillon vs Erie, the plaintiffs have been successful in getting the ordinances thrown out, but at a cost, as I understand it, in the neighborhood of $50,000. That's money that they won't get back.
Why should the legislature continue to allow these municipalities to break the law and bankrupt gun owners?
Also, as far as the issue of organizational standing goes, it's really a red herring: If these municipalities would have just followed the EXISTING commonwealth preemption statute, Act 192 of 2014 would not have been necessary.
Also, as far as the single-subject rule goes, I was listening to debate when it came up. Daryl Metacalfe's answer was that it all came down to guns: The original text of the bill defined a new offense which would cause those convicted under it to be prohibited from owning firearms (thus it was about guns), and the amended text added two other items also relating to guns: The preemption enhancement text (guns), as well as another bit requiring the Commonwealth Police to report information to NICS about those adjudicated mentally defective or relieved of such disability (guns).
Thus, the argument is that the act in question was always about guns.
Now doesn't that just beat all: A spammer makes it through the comment filter, but I often don't.