Posted on 12/06/2002 2:05:37 AM PST by chance33_98
9th Circuit upholds gun restrictions
Says individuals have limited weapons rights
WIRE REPORTS
The 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals on Thursday unanimously upheld most aspects of a California law restricting sales and ownership of semiautomatic firearms sometimes called assault weapons.
The San Francisco-based court rejected a challenge to the law based on recent interpretations of the Second Amendment by another federal appeals court and by the Justice Department.
The weapons law, enacted in 1989 and broadened in 1999, was challenged by nine Californians who owned or wanted to buy such firearms.
The decision is significant, legal experts said, not for its outcome, which was largely required by earlier decisions of the court, but for its extended rebuttal of more recent interpretations of the Second Amendment.
In 2001, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in New Orleans, found that the Second Amendment broadly protects the rights of individuals to own guns. The decision on Thursday took the contrary view, that the amendment protects only a collective right to organize state militias.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt, writing for two members of a three-judge panel, said that a rebuttal was warranted because, except for the 2001 decision, "there exists no thorough judicial examination of the amendment's meaning."
The Supreme Court's most extensive treatment of the question, in 1939, was, Reinhardt wrote, "somewhat cryptic." Courts have generally interpreted the decision to support, though obliquely, the collective-rights model.
In footnotes in two filings with the Supreme Court in May, the Justice Department, reversed a view it had espoused for decades. The filings said the Second Amendment protects the rights of individuals "to possess and bear their own firearms, subject to reasonable restrictions."
Reinhardt, generally considered to be one of the nation's most liberal jurists, concluded that the text and history of the Second Amendment and judicial decisions interpreting it all support the view that the amendment protects only "the right of the people to maintain effective militias."
The three-judge panel did strike down as irrational an aspect of the law that allowed retired law enforcement officers to retain assault weapons.
A visiting federal appeals court judge, Frank J. Magill, joined in the result, but declined to join in the majority's discussion of the Second Amendment.
He wrote instead that, in light of precedent in the 9th Circuit, "it is unnecessary and improper to reach the merits of the Second Amendment claims or to explore the contours of the Second Amendment debate."
Judge Raymond Fisher was the third judge on the panel.
The National Rifle Association said it was disappointed with the ruling.
"From an organizational standpoint, for 131 years we've been standing steadfastly to protect the freedoms of all law abiding Americans and stand steadfastly that the Second Amendment is an individual right and will continue to do so," said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.
He said "it was too early to tell" what ramification, if any, the court's decision would have and whether the decision would usher in calls for a fresh wave of gun control laws.
Attorneys for the suing gun owners were not immediately available to comment on whether they would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Weapons owners challenged 1999 amendments to the 1989 law that originally outlawed 75 high-powered weapons that have rapid-fire capabilities. The Legislature passed the nation's first law banning such weapons after a gunman, Patrick Purdy, fired a semiautomatic weapon into a Stockton school yard, killing five children and injuring 30.
Following California's lead, several states and the federal government passed similar or even stricter bans.
In 1999, the California Legislature redrafted the law to ban copycat weapons with similar features to the banned weapons. Lawmakers adopted a provision that bans assault weapons based on a host of features instead of makes and models - a move that made illegal hundreds of so-called copycat weapons not clearly defined in the law.
if he is so liberal, why does he continually rule to restrict things...
Nothin' to see here folks, keep movin'
"The 9th Circuit"... those words are suffcient to ignore anything that follows!
He just did us a huge favor. Liberals usually try to be much more subtle that this. Reinhardt, IMO, wrote this decision in stark langauge that almost demands a SCOTUS review.
When I joined and served in the Army for twenty years, it was to defend and protect our Constitution.
Today, I am too old to actually fight.
However, it is still my duty to supply the arms and ammunition that may be needed by our young patriots, if it is ever required in the future.
On that issue, I know my duties as a citizen and no longer care what new laws are written.
Laws which are in violation of this basic principle, will be ignored..
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