SAF News 3rd & 4th June 2008
NEWS RELEASE
GA GUN DEALER MADE RIGHT MOVE IN QUEST FOR FAIR TRIAL, SAYS SAF
BELLEVUE, WA – Georgia gun dealer Jay Wallace’s decision Monday to default on a lawsuit by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and carry his case to an appeals court, was the right move because of genuine concerns he could not get a fair trial before federal judge Jack B. Weinstein, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.
SAF has been the largest single contributor to Wallace’s defense against the rogue lawsuit filed by Bloomberg, following the anti-gun mayor’s infamous vigilante sting operation in 2006. SAF founder Alan Gottlieb concurred with Wallace’s attorney, John Renzulli, that “There was no chance for a fair trial here.”
“There must be an appearance of fairness from the bench in any trial,” Gottlieb observed, “and that is unfortunately lacking in Jack Weinstein’s courtroom when there is a gun case being heard. He defied a 2005 federal statute barring junk lawsuits against gun makers and allowed such a lawsuit to move forward, only to have it tossed out last month by the 2nd US Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
“Even when Judge Weinstein ruled against the NAACP in its first lawsuit against gun makers,” Gottlieb recalled, “he made it clear that he believes there is a ‘nuisance created by (the gun industry) through the illegal availability of guns in New York.’ With a bias like that, Judge Weinstein should recuse himself from hearing cases related to the firearms industry, and hopefully, the appeals court will rule that Weinstein does not have jurisdiction over the city’s case against Wallace.”
Wallace’s default was pandered by Mayor Bloomberg as a victory for the city, but Gottlieb suggested that Bloomberg should hold his tongue.
“Mr. Wallace and his attorney didn’t throw in the towel,” Gottlieb stated, “they merely avoided being kangaroo-kicked in Judge Weinstein’s court. There is no indication this case is over, and based on New York’s track record in court against the gun industry, whatever feeling of victory Mayor Bloomberg and his cronies now enjoy is almost certain to be very short-lived.”
SAF has been the largest single contributor to Wallace’s defense against the rogue lawsuit filed by Bloomberg, following the anti-gun mayor’s infamous vigilante sting operation in 2006. SAF founder Alan Gottlieb concurred with Wallace’s attorney, John Renzulli, that “There was no chance for a fair trial here.”
“There must be an appearance of fairness from the bench in any trial,” Gottlieb observed, “and that is unfortunately lacking in Jack Weinstein’s courtroom when there is a gun case being heard. He defied a 2005 federal statute barring junk lawsuits against gun makers and allowed such a lawsuit to move forward, only to have it tossed out last month by the 2nd US Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
“Even when Judge Weinstein ruled against the NAACP in its first lawsuit against gun makers,” Gottlieb recalled, “he made it clear that he believes there is a ‘nuisance created by (the gun industry) through the illegal availability of guns in New York.’ With a bias like that, Judge Weinstein should recuse himself from hearing cases related to the firearms industry, and hopefully, the appeals court will rule that Weinstein does not have jurisdiction over the city’s case against Wallace.”
Wallace’s default was pandered by Mayor Bloomberg as a victory for the city, but Gottlieb suggested that Bloomberg should hold his tongue.
“Mr. Wallace and his attorney didn’t throw in the towel,” Gottlieb stated, “they merely avoided being kangaroo-kicked in Judge Weinstein’s court. There is no indication this case is over, and based on New York’s track record in court against the gun industry, whatever feeling of victory Mayor Bloomberg and his cronies now enjoy is almost certain to be very short-lived.”
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Important Event
“Is the Second Amendment an Individual Right?” (Washington, D.C.; 6/9/08)
http://www.independent.org/events/detail.asp?eventID=137
Last year, a federal appeals court overturned the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns. Now the U.S. Supreme Court will decide the case, District of Columbia vs. Heller, after nearly seventy years of silence on the Second Amendment. Observers expect the Court to finally settle the legal question of whether the constitutional "right of the people to keep and bear arms" is an individual right held by all, or a "collective right" of the state governments to maintain militias. What did the Founders intend when they drafted the Second Amendment?
Please join us as constitutional legal scholar and Independent Institute Research Fellow Stephen P. Halbrook and George Mason University Law School legal historian Joyce Lee Malcolm examine these issues. Dr. Halbrook’s new book, The Founders' Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms, is the authoritative account of the Founders’ aims. Professor Malcolm’s book, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right, traces that right to English law and traditions and provides a comprehensive history of the transmission of that right to the American colonies. Independent Institute President David J. Theroux will moderate.
WHO:
Stephen P. Halbrook is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and author of the new book, The Founders' Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms. He received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and Ph.D. in social philosophy from Florida State University. Now a practicing attorney in Fairfax, Virginia, he has taught legal and political philosophy at George Mason University, Howard University, and the Tuskegee Institute, and has won three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Among his other books are That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right; Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms, 1866-1876; State and Federal Bills of Rights and Constitutional Guarantees; Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II; and Firearms Law Deskbook. His popular writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Times, and elsewhere.
http://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=517
Joyce Lee Malcolm is Professor of Legal History at George Mason University School of Law and former Director of Research for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Malcolm received her Ph.D. in history from Brandeis University. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she has taught at Princeton University, Bentley College, Boston University, Northeastern University and Cambridge University, and she has served as Senior Advisor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Security Studies Program, Visiting Scholar at Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies, and Bye Fellow at Robinson College, Cambridge University. Her books include To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right; Guns and Violence: The English Experience; Caesar's Due: Loyalty and King Charles; Stepchild of the Revolution: A Slave Child in Revolutionary America; The Struggle for Sovereignty: Seventeenth-Century English Political Tracts (2 vols.), and The Scene of the Battle, 1775.
http://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=1003
WHEN:
Monday, June 9, 2008
Reception and book signing: 5:00 p.m.
Program: 6:00 - 7:00 p.m.
Q&A to follow
http://www.independent.org/events/detail.asp?eventID=137
WHERE:
The Independent Institute
1319 Eighteenth Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
Map and directions: http://www.independent.org/aboutus/map.asp#wash
RESERVATIONS:
Complimentary
Phone: 510-632-1366 x118
Email: nbeardsley@independent.org
Reserve online: http://www.independent.org/events/rsvp.asp?eventid=137
Copies of The Founders' Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms, by Stephen P. Halbrook, will be available for purchase at a special discount.
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=72
PRAISE for The Founders' Second Amendment:
“The Founders’ Second Amendment is an impressive achievement. . . Halbrook has produced what promises to be the standard work for years to come on the original intent of the Second Amendment.”
—Donald W. Livingston, Professor of Philosophy, Emory University
“The Founders’ Second Amendment is crisply written, rich with history, and sure to be valuable to anyone interested in understanding the original meaning of the Second Amendment's right to bear arms.”
—Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Tennessee
“Stephen Halbrook’s The Founders’ Second Amendment is first-rate work, utterly convincing. This is a solid and important work.”
—Forrest McDonald, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of History, University of Alabama
“The subject of The Founders’ Second Amendment is currently ‘front-and-center’ as a ‘hot’ and major controversy. Well researched and well presented, Halbrook’s book has brought forward a substantial amount of new research, not redundant of what others have provided, and this book will find a solid place among leading works on the subject.”
—William W. Van Alstyne, Lee Professor of Law, College of William and Mary
“Like much of Halbrook’s other excellent work, The Founders’ Second Amendment is both well-written and full of fascinating details. It will serve as an important resource for professional scholars and interested laypersons. One especially useful aspect of Halbrook’s work is that the author so consistently lets a huge variety of original sources speak for themselves.”
—Nelson Lund, Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law, George Mason University
Further information about The Founders’ Second Amendment.
http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=72
Further information about this event.
http://www.independent.org/events/detail.asp?eventID=137
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==
NEWS RELEASE
S-FRAN RED INK REVEALED; PUSHING GUN BAN CASE DIDN’T HELP, SAYS SAF
BELLEVUE, WA – San Francisco’s budget crisis underscores the frivolity of the city’s stubborn and expensive defense of its doomed-from-the-start 2005 gun ban, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.
SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb said the city administration’s pursuit of this case – which was almost a carbon copy of a similar court action 23 years ago that was also won by the Foundation – is a clear indication that “fiscal and philosophical irresponsibility run hand-in-hand on the Board of Supervisors and in the mayor’s office.”
“Mayor Gavin Newsom should have, and probably could have, stopped this case dead in its tracks after the city’s first loss in the trial court,” Gottlieb noted. “Instead, the city doggedly appealed, and appealed again, and for what? To make a political statement of some sort? When you’re hemorrhaging money from the city budget, pushing a court case that you already know you’re going to lose is remarkable carelessness with the public’s money.”
SAF was joined in the lawsuit by the National Rifle Association, Law Enforcement Alliance of America, California Association of Firearm Retailers, and several San Francisco residents. In the early 1980s, SAF fought a similar ban on its own, against then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein, thus creating a legal precedent and something of a legal roadmap for the coalition of gun rights organizations to follow this time around.
“Anti-gun-rights politicians and gun control extremists are constantly complaining that gun owners need to be responsible,” Gottlieb observed. “San Francisco’s financial mismanagement, which borders on malfeasance, clearly shows that the city’s gun-hating leadership doesn’t understand what responsibility means. Running up a budget deficit of $338 million is proof positive that whomever is in charge has some healthy explaining to do for spending money to defend an indefensible measure in court.
“Every homeowner, and millions of them are gun owners, knows that you cannot spend more than you make,” Gottlieb concluded. “Balancing the budget may require the city to lay off employees, including police officers. In that case, citizens will have even more reason to own firearms to protect themselves from criminals the city should have been taking to court, instead of fighting this case to disarm the wrong people.”
SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb said the city administration’s pursuit of this case – which was almost a carbon copy of a similar court action 23 years ago that was also won by the Foundation – is a clear indication that “fiscal and philosophical irresponsibility run hand-in-hand on the Board of Supervisors and in the mayor’s office.”
“Mayor Gavin Newsom should have, and probably could have, stopped this case dead in its tracks after the city’s first loss in the trial court,” Gottlieb noted. “Instead, the city doggedly appealed, and appealed again, and for what? To make a political statement of some sort? When you’re hemorrhaging money from the city budget, pushing a court case that you already know you’re going to lose is remarkable carelessness with the public’s money.”
SAF was joined in the lawsuit by the National Rifle Association, Law Enforcement Alliance of America, California Association of Firearm Retailers, and several San Francisco residents. In the early 1980s, SAF fought a similar ban on its own, against then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein, thus creating a legal precedent and something of a legal roadmap for the coalition of gun rights organizations to follow this time around.
“Anti-gun-rights politicians and gun control extremists are constantly complaining that gun owners need to be responsible,” Gottlieb observed. “San Francisco’s financial mismanagement, which borders on malfeasance, clearly shows that the city’s gun-hating leadership doesn’t understand what responsibility means. Running up a budget deficit of $338 million is proof positive that whomever is in charge has some healthy explaining to do for spending money to defend an indefensible measure in court.
“Every homeowner, and millions of them are gun owners, knows that you cannot spend more than you make,” Gottlieb concluded. “Balancing the budget may require the city to lay off employees, including police officers. In that case, citizens will have even more reason to own firearms to protect themselves from criminals the city should have been taking to court, instead of fighting this case to disarm the wrong people.”
-END-
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