Free Republic

“All political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are established to protect and maintain individual rights.” This language from the Washington State Constitution failed to impress one city councilman from Oak Harbor as he demonstrated the petulance inherent in liberals by walking out of a January council meeting because one of the attending citizens was legally armed. (1) At issue was a 2009 lawsuit filed by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) against the City Of Seattle for having broken state law by placing a ban on the...

The Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation has launched a unique pilot project in Washington and Virginia that advances its legal agenda without actually filing any lawsuits, and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb told this column that he is looking to take this campaign nationwide in 2013. SAF’s motto has been “Winning Firearms Freedom One Lawsuit at a Time” since the foundation’s landmark Second Amendment case, McDonald v. City of Chicago, was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2010. That ruling incorporated the Second Amendment to the states, thus opening a floodgate for challenges to local laws and ordinances that...

The oral arguments in Lane v. Holder (CA4 Case 11-1847) will take place next Tuesday, October 23rd at 9:30AM in room 201 (the ‘Green Courtroom’ ) of the Powell Courthouse in Richmond Virginia. Lane is the first case docketed for the day in that courtroom so plan to be there early if you want to attend the Lane oral arguments. --IMAGE HERE-- One day later on Wednesday, October 24th, the 4th Circuit will hear oral arguments in Woollard v. Gallagher (CA4 Case 12-1437). Oral arguments are scheduled to begin at 9:30AM in room 412 (the ‘Red Courtroom’) but Woollard is...

Otis McDonald, one of several headliners scheduled to appear at this weekend’s 27th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) in Orlando, Fla., has suffered a serious head injury and is in intensive care at a Chicago-area hospital, Gun Rights Examiner has learned. Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation, notified members of the SAF Board of Directors during their meeting in Orlando today. McDonald was scheduled to speak during the Saturday awards luncheon, which also features U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) and former Ambassador Donald A. Mahley.McDonald apparently fell and suffered a serious head injury. He...

BELLEVUE, WA --(Ammoland.com)- The Second Amendment Foundation today reminded the United Nations that “if women have the right to be protected against violence, then they have the right to protect themselves against violence.” So spoke SAF’s Director of Operations Julianne Versnel, whose remarks to the U.N. Programme of Action conference were unlike anything many delegates had ever heard before. The conference is seen as the first step toward rekindling discussions about an on-going process to continue development of a small arms and light weapons treaty, which earlier this summer collapsed when several nations opposed it. Noting that she had reviewed...

BELLEVUE, WA --(Ammoland.com)- Squandering an opportunity to redeem the Garden State for its long disparagement of the Second Amendment – and in particular, the right to carry – New Jersey’s newly appointed Attorney General has instead slapped gun owners in the face in the latest set of papers in a federal lawsuit brought by ANJRPC and the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) to overturn New Jersey’s unconstitutional handgun carry laws. The State’s latest filing maintains its absurd position that the Second Amendment does not exist outside the home, and that it is the State’s responsibility to protect the public from law...

The Second Amendment Foundation has released a pro-gun patch bearing the slogan "COME AND TAKE THEM." Guns.com is guessing that the phrase, "You'll have to pry it from our cold, dead hands" was too long to fit on a patch. Alan Gottlieb, the founder and Executive Vice President of SAF, notes that the patch can be sewn into just about any garment, and the hook-and-loop nylon fastener allows the patch to be mounted and removed. Gottlieb also has strong words about the meaning behind the patch, directing his ire at politicians and police agencies, "What the police are doing is...

BELLEVUE, WA --(Ammoland.com)- I would like to personally invite you to our 27th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC), which will be taking place September 28, 29, and 30, 2012 in Orlando, Florida at the Hyatt Regency Orlando International Airport hotel. With new battles over individual rights in the age of terrorism, attacks on our gun rights from the UN, a number of Second Amendment cases in the courts and an important upcoming election, your attendance is critical. The theme of Elect Liberty is most important as we set the pro-gun rights agenda for the year to come. This year...

BELLEVUE, WA - A Federal District Court Judge in Massachusetts has granted summary judgment in a Second Amendment Foundation case challenging that state's denial of firearms licenses to permanent resident aliens. U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodcock concluded that "the Massachusetts firearms regulatory regime as applied to the individual plaintiffs, contravenes the Second Amendment." The case involves two Massachusetts residents, Christopher Fletcher and Eoin Pryal, whose applications for licenses to possess firearms in their homes for immediate self-defense purposes were denied under a state law that does not allow non-citizens to own handguns. SAF was joined in the case...

Referencing today’s post on Glenn Beck and Constitutional Carry, I bumped into the founder of the Second Amendment Foundation at the NRA convention. I asked Alan Gottlieb if he could foresee a day when the entire country enjoyed permitless concealed carry (a la Alaska, Arizona, Wyoming and Vermont). “It’ll never happen,” the gun rights champion stated flatly. “New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii—it would have to get through the legislature, and that just isn’t in the cards.” Never? “Not in my lifetime.” Given Mr. Gottleib’s considerable contribution to our collective gun rights, let’s hope that’s a very long time. Let’s...

Heads must be spinning at the Brady Campaign's headquarters with news that the Second Amendment Foundation just won its fourth Second Amendment case this month. The latest case is from Massachusetts where U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodcock found that the commonwealth's ban on handgun possession by permanent resident aliens contravened the Second Amendment. From the Second Amendment Foundation's announcement of their win in Fletcher v. Haas: SAF WINS 2A CASE IN MASS, STRIKING DOWN GUN BAN FOR LEGAL ALIENS For Immediate Release: 3/30/2012 BELLEVUE, WA – A Federal District Court Judge in Massachusetts today granted summary judgment in...

BELLEVUE, WA – A federal district court judge in North Carolina has just struck down that state’s emergency power to impose a ban on firearms and ammunition outside the home during a declared emergency, ruling that the provision violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The case, Bateman v. Purdue, was brought by the Second Amendment Foundation, Grass Roots North Carolina FFE and three individual plaintiffs. Defendants in the case were Gov. Beverly Purdue and Reuben F. Young, secretary of the state’s Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, in their official capacities. In his opinion, Judge...

The Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation has banked another check to cover legal fees in a federal gun rights lawsuit, this one for $12,000 from the City of Omaha, NE. While the amount is a fraction of the $399,950 payment received last week from the City of Chicago and anti-gun mayor Rahm Emanuel, it represents an equally-important victory to SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb. This column discussed the Chicago pay-out with a photo image that raced across cyberspace. The Omaha lawsuit was dealt with rather quickly late last year. It involved a legal resident alien, Armando Pliego Gonzalez...

Some people collect stamps. Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), collects checks from governments that try to curtail citizens’ right to bear arms. Last week, he received a check for $399,950 signed by Chicago mayor and former President Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel in payment for the cost of fighting the windy city’s handgun ban in Supreme Court case McDonald v. City of Chicago. But this is just a start. “They’re going to owe us money as well for Ezell v. Chicago (a suit over Chicago’s gun range restrictions) so this isn’t the first...

The Second Amendment Foundation and Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs will appeal a federal judge's ruling Friday that "the Second Amendment does not include a general right to carry handguns outside the home." Federal Judge William H. Walls, a Clinton appointee, dismissed a case filed by both organizations challenging New Jersey's handgun carry laws, which have all but eliminated the right to self-defense with a firearm outside the home. "The Second Amendment Foundation and ANJRPC are prepared to take this case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where SAF has already won a landmark case...

The people of South Kordofan have become caught up in the unresolved contradiction of the post-John Garang Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), which is now leading South Sudan into independence; what happens when a national federalist political movement becomes an ethnic separatist political movement? This is the problem in several areas of Sudan outside the new borders of South Sudan, areas in which the then federalist SPLM/A recruited fighters to combat the Khartoum regime in the interests of creating a federal “New Sudan.” With South Sudan declaring full independence on July 9, a force of roughly 40,000 Nuba SPLA fighters...

The Second Amendment Foundation, SAF, and Alan Gura filed an amicus brief AGAINST the open carry of firearms. I believe they have been hiding their real agenda for some time now. I believe their agenda is to establish a permit or licensing scheme for the bearing of arms. If anyone has read their briefs, they do not seem to want open carry as an option. Here is a link to the brief which was filed 12-5-2011 https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4xDZlk5vthcODdkNmEzZWMtYTFkYi00ZWZmLTg3ZDYtZTY4OWQ0Yzk2NzZm

With the resolution of the Heller and McDonald cases the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms has been secured as a legal right for every citizen of the United States. Well, apparently not EVERY citizen. Stephen Dearth is a natural born citizen of the United States who chooses to make his primary residence in Canada, making him one of the millions of U.S. Citizens who do not have a permanent residence in the United States. That minor wrinkle means that under U.S. law he cannot purchase a firearm except for “sporting purposes” . . . As the Heller...

BELLEVUE, WA -- The Second Amendment Foundation has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of California’s ban on so-called “assault weapons,” claiming that the statute is “vague and ambiguous” in its definition of assault weapons, leading to the arrest of a California man on two different occasions. SAF is joined in the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, by the CalGuns Foundation and Brendan John Richards, an honorably-discharged Marine and Iraq war veteran, who was arrested and jailed in May 2010 and August 2011. On both occasions, charges against Richards were...

BELLEVUE, WA - The Second Amendment Foundation today thanked the National Rifle Association and California Rifle and Pistol Foundation for filing amicus briefs in SAF’s challenge of Yolo County, California’s policies that exploit the state’s regulations on the issuance of concealed firearms carry permits. Joining SAF in that lawsuit is the CalGuns Foundation. The case is known as Richards v. Prieto. It targets Yolo County’s arbitrary policy that requires CCW applicants to provide good cause for obtaining a permit, and subjects each applicant to a “moral character” standard. “The policies practices in Yolo County are clearly unconstitutional and should be...