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A Shot at the Second Amendment: If the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a right to bear arms, the decision may be in spite of the powerful NRA gun lobby—not because of it by John Gibeaut
The U.S. Supreme Court had not even decided whether to take the case when National Rifle Association lobbyist Wayne LaPierre fired off the distress flare:
“The biggest Second Amendment court battle in history is about to begin—one that will have a huge impact on you, your children and every other American gun owner for generations to come,” LaPierre wrote in an August fundraising letter to the NRA’s 4.3 million members. “And I’m not exaggerating a bit.”
He’s probably right there.
The NRA wants money—lots of it—to make sure the District of Columbia’s handgun ban stays buried good and deep. That’s where an appeals court left it after an unprecedented decision early this year that killed it as a violation of the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms.
The decision on March 9 by a split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit marked the first time that a federal appellate court used the amendment to invalidate a gun-control regulation.
The district has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to resurrect the city ordinance containing the ban, which also requires owners to secure rifles and shotguns with trigger locks or keep them disassembled. District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290. The justices are expected to decide by early November whether to accept the case. It may give the court the clearest chance ever to say once and for all whether the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns, as the D.C. Circuit held, or merely affords states a way to arm their militias, as nearly every other court to consider the issue has concluded.
If the tone of LaPierre’s letter didn’t sound urgent enough, he used plenty of underlined boldface type and capital letters to drive home his point. He told the faithful a top-notch brief may cost as much as $1.2 million.
“For gun owners and NRA members, this is the biggest legal battle that we have ever fought, or will ever fight—and its outcome will probably impact every law-abiding American gun owner,” LaPierre wrote in the five-page letter. “It is a battle we simply cannot afford to lose.”
Here’s where LaPierre heads into a wrong turn: It’s not an NRA case. In fact, the gun rights supporters who filed it complain that lawyers working for the NRA, concerned the case could backfire, spent considerable time and money trying to scuttle it. The association finally was dragged kicking and screaming before the Supreme Court after the prospect of review appeared more likely than it has in years.
“They recognized this was a good case and D.C. was the perfect place,” says plaintiffs lawyer Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow at Washington’s libertarian Cato Institute. “That’s what concerned them.”
Levy, who is bankrolling and pushing Heller to the Supreme Court out of his own pocket and on his own time, says the NRA first sent two lawyers to try to dissuade him from filing the case. After that failed, Levy says the NRA tried to hijack the case by filing a competing case, then trying to consolidate the two.
To boot, Levy says, the NRA supports congressional legislation to repeal the gun ban, which could render Heller moot. He also wonders why the NRA waited more than 25 years to challenge the 1976 D.C. ordinance.
BREAKING A CASE
NRA lawyers say they’re engaged in nothing more than prudent case selection in much the same way the NAACP incrementally approached civil rights litigation—one baby step at a time.
But although they fought the Heller plaintiffs at the onset, the NRA ultimately couldn’t stay away. Its leaders just can’t afford to let members and contributors see them get cold feet after years of waiting for a Second Amendment case to reach the Supreme Court, confides one lawyer who regularly represents the association as outside counsel.
Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman at NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Va., declined comment on the case. However, he says, the NRA continues to support legislative repeal, first proposed in 2003 but given little chance of passage before the Supreme Court decides what to do with Heller. The association also filed an amicus brief in the D.C. Circuit supporting the Heller plaintiffs, and it intends to file another in the Supreme Court if the justices grant cert, he says.
Arulanandam also says he believes the NRA previously had gone to court against the district, perhaps during the ban’s early days, but he was unable to provide details. The first challenges came to the D.C. Circuit only recently in Levy’s case, 478 F.3d 370 (March 9), and in the NRA-sponsored competitor, which the appeals court pitched for standing. Seegars v. Gonzales, 396 F.3d 1248 (2005).
“We’ve been involved in this issue longer than anyone else,” says Arulanandam. “For anyone else to say they have an exclusive right to this issue is extremely arrogant. As long as there’s been a gun ban in the District of Columbia, we’ve been involved.”
But it’s not the first time the NRA and other gun rights advocates have found themselves at cross-purposes. A California gun rights lawyer gripes that the NRA argued against him and his clients in 2003 in their challenge to the state’s bar on assault weapons, only to switch sides and use the same argument to support the plaintiffs when they asked the Supreme Court to take the case.
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The U.S. Supreme Court had not even decided whether to take the case when National Rifle Association lobbyist Wayne LaPierre fired off the distress flare:
“The biggest Second Amendment court battle in history is about to begin—one that will have a huge impact on you, your children and every other American gun owner for generations to come,” LaPierre wrote in an August fundraising letter to the NRA’s 4.3 million members. “And I’m not exaggerating a bit.”
He’s probably right there.
The NRA wants money—lots of it—to make sure the District of Columbia’s handgun ban stays buried good and deep. That’s where an appeals court left it after an unprecedented decision early this year that killed it as a violation of the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms.
The decision on March 9 by a split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit marked the first time that a federal appellate court used the amendment to invalidate a gun-control regulation.
The district has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to resurrect the city ordinance containing the ban, which also requires owners to secure rifles and shotguns with trigger locks or keep them disassembled. District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290. The justices are expected to decide by early November whether to accept the case. It may give the court the clearest chance ever to say once and for all whether the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns, as the D.C. Circuit held, or merely affords states a way to arm their militias, as nearly every other court to consider the issue has concluded.
If the tone of LaPierre’s letter didn’t sound urgent enough, he used plenty of underlined boldface type and capital letters to drive home his point. He told the faithful a top-notch brief may cost as much as $1.2 million.
“For gun owners and NRA members, this is the biggest legal battle that we have ever fought, or will ever fight—and its outcome will probably impact every law-abiding American gun owner,” LaPierre wrote in the five-page letter. “It is a battle we simply cannot afford to lose.”
Here’s where LaPierre heads into a wrong turn: It’s not an NRA case. In fact, the gun rights supporters who filed it complain that lawyers working for the NRA, concerned the case could backfire, spent considerable time and money trying to scuttle it. The association finally was dragged kicking and screaming before the Supreme Court after the prospect of review appeared more likely than it has in years.
“They recognized this was a good case and D.C. was the perfect place,” says plaintiffs lawyer Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow at Washington’s libertarian Cato Institute. “That’s what concerned them.”
Levy, who is bankrolling and pushing Heller to the Supreme Court out of his own pocket and on his own time, says the NRA first sent two lawyers to try to dissuade him from filing the case. After that failed, Levy says the NRA tried to hijack the case by filing a competing case, then trying to consolidate the two.
To boot, Levy says, the NRA supports congressional legislation to repeal the gun ban, which could render Heller moot. He also wonders why the NRA waited more than 25 years to challenge the 1976 D.C. ordinance.
BREAKING A CASE
NRA lawyers say they’re engaged in nothing more than prudent case selection in much the same way the NAACP incrementally approached civil rights litigation—one baby step at a time.
But although they fought the Heller plaintiffs at the onset, the NRA ultimately couldn’t stay away. Its leaders just can’t afford to let members and contributors see them get cold feet after years of waiting for a Second Amendment case to reach the Supreme Court, confides one lawyer who regularly represents the association as outside counsel.
Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman at NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Va., declined comment on the case. However, he says, the NRA continues to support legislative repeal, first proposed in 2003 but given little chance of passage before the Supreme Court decides what to do with Heller. The association also filed an amicus brief in the D.C. Circuit supporting the Heller plaintiffs, and it intends to file another in the Supreme Court if the justices grant cert, he says.
Arulanandam also says he believes the NRA previously had gone to court against the district, perhaps during the ban’s early days, but he was unable to provide details. The first challenges came to the D.C. Circuit only recently in Levy’s case, 478 F.3d 370 (March 9), and in the NRA-sponsored competitor, which the appeals court pitched for standing. Seegars v. Gonzales, 396 F.3d 1248 (2005).
“We’ve been involved in this issue longer than anyone else,” says Arulanandam. “For anyone else to say they have an exclusive right to this issue is extremely arrogant. As long as there’s been a gun ban in the District of Columbia, we’ve been involved.”
But it’s not the first time the NRA and other gun rights advocates have found themselves at cross-purposes. A California gun rights lawyer gripes that the NRA argued against him and his clients in 2003 in their challenge to the state’s bar on assault weapons, only to switch sides and use the same argument to support the plaintiffs when they asked the Supreme Court to take the case.
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