Supreme Court Declines To Hear 2 Gun Rights Cases

[Eugene]

Source: Huffington Post

POLITICS 06/26/2017 02:00 pm ET

Supreme Court Declines To Hear 2 Gun Rights Cases

And people on both sides of the gun issue are likely to be unhappy.

In a pair of decisions that appeared to frustrate justices on both sides of the ideological spectrum, the Supreme Court on Monday turned down two Second Amendment cases.

The higher-profile of the cases, Peruta v. California, involved a challenge to a California law that bans the open carrying of firearms and requires concealed carry applicants to first demonstrate good cause. Petitioners had argued that law enforcement officials in San Diego and Yolo counties had defined good cause so narrowly that they only gave licenses to individuals who could, for example, present “documented threats of violence” or “demonstrate they are a specific target at risk.”

By refusing to hear the case, the justices left in place a ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the California restrictions and declared that the Second Amendment did not protect the right to carry a concealed weapon outside of the home.

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The second case, Sessions v. Binderup, centered around a federal law banning convicted felons from owning guns. Daniel Binderup and Julio Suarez ― two Pennsylvania men who had been barred from possessing firearms due to convictions for nonviolent misdemeanors more than 20 years ago ― challenged the measure, claiming it denied Second Amendment rights to people convicted only of minor offenses.

Federal law generally prohibits gun ownership for any person convicted of a “crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year,” excluding “any State offense classified by the laws of the State as a misdemeanor and punishable by a term of imprisonment of two years or less.”

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Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/supreme-court-gun-rights_us_59511ad5e4b0da2c731d11e7

[karadax]

1. SCOTUS probably wants to wait and see how other states run with the 9th circuits ruling.

They'll end up taking up the case next year if more states try to limit conceal carry / open carry in the same fashion as they did in California.

It's the smart move for them. Why rule when you don't have to?

[pablo_marmol]

2. "It's the smart move for them. Why rule when you don't have to?"

Last edited Thu Jun 29, 2017, 11:34 AM - Edit history (1)

True this, given that a number of similar cases are sitting in the pipeline.

[jimmy the one]

3. this was not a push

.. people on both sides of the gun issue are likely to be unhappy.

Well this particular people is not unhappy, I think it's fine overall. Gun control won the big one. Tho I thinks the rule is that these cases could be revisited in the future by scatus.

1 By refusing to hear the case, the justices left in place a ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the California restrictions and declared that the Second Amendment did not protect the right to carry a concealed weapon outside of the home.

2nd case: By declining to hear the case, the justices let stand a lower court’s 2016 ruling ordering the government to restore Binderup’s and Suarez’s rights to gun ownership and declaring that individuals may challenge their gun prohibitions on a case-by-case basis.

Binderup & Suarez offenses weren't that godawful, unless binderup was well over 25: Binderup pleaded guilty in 1996 to corrupting a minor for engaging in a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old co-worker. Although he faced up to five years in prison, he was sentenced to three years of probation. Suarez pleaded guilty in 1990 to carrying a handgun without a license, a charge that carried a maximum three-year sentence. He was given a suspended jail sentence and a year of probation, which he completed.

On case #1, seems gorsuck has indeed replaced Scalia as Clarence's mule driver: Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, both conservatives, disagreed with their colleagues’ decision to not take up the case. Thomas said the denial “reflects a distressing trend: the treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right

Yeah clarence, poor widdle 2nd amemma getting twampled on all da time, americans need more more more guns and nobody to tellum they can't, eh?