Constitutional Law

Federal Court Rules Against DC on Wrongful Gun Arrests

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth issued an important decision on Wednesday that the D.C. government is liable for wrongfully arresting six people between 2012 and 2014 for violating its ban on carrying handguns in public. It is the latest loss of the city, which continues to pass legislation that runs afoul of governing Supreme Court precedent.

Ironically, the District was behind some of the greatest losses for gun control advocates. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court in 2008 ruled the right to bear arms is an individual right. Two years later, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court ruled that this right applied against the states. Since then, courts have rejected efforts to limit aspects of gun ownership from barring concealed weapons to restricting ammunition. Then, in Wrenn v. District of Columbia, the D.C. Circuit struck down a requirement that gun owners show “good reason” for a concealed carry permit as unconstitutional.

Now Lamberth has cleared the way for claims for damages by as many as 4,500 people similarly arrested under the law the courts overturned in 2014. Those rising costs do not seem to register with the D.C. City Council. The city could appeal and argue that, at the time of the arrests, it was not clear that the underlying law was unconstitutional. Lamberth rejected that argument and held that the law was clearly unconstitutional when the city passed it.

Notably, the Supreme Court is about to hear a major Supreme Court case involving the Second Amendment in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, an appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Here is the decision: Smith v. District of Columbia

 

77 thoughts on “Federal Court Rules Against DC on Wrongful Gun Arrests”

  1. It is refreshing to see a ray of light in this current sea of unconstitutional attacks by this current leftist admin allegedly piloted by a senile gummi puppet. Remember when slow joe said just fire two shotgun blasts in the air…that’s how stupid this hack is. Criminal will find more than two shotgun blasts in Red American areas trying to enter citizens homes, Meanwhile in blue dilapidated cities and states there is nothing but mob rule , crime and get this gobs of shootings by masses of idgits that likely can’t even read or write because pooblik education is so awesome for the gazillions they rob from the taxpayer to make it so.

    1. Well the dims finally got their wish in Massachusetts, Smith & Wesson are pulling out. 500 good paying jobs will leave the state. Nice job dims.

  2. “Garland should extend funding for special counsel John Durham’s Russiagate probe”

    – New York Post

  3. Gun control in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control_in_China. Again, our gun control advocates walk hand in hand with there brothers without arms. There have been times in history when men have justifiably listened to a call to arms but it may come to pass in our nation that we will be defenseless against a new totalitarian government between our shores. Then you will be commanded in every minute of your life from birth to death because no retaliation will be feared by those who declare “The Way”. Some would prefer to have it be so.

    1. I trust the rank and file of our military and police to refuse to become tools of despotic rule. Have you noticed, those Americans who carry arms as agents of the State swear their allegiance to the US Constitution, not the current leadership. There is a reason for that.

      If you lose trust in your fellow Americans, that neurosis is the thing that puts the country on the path to totalitarianism.

      1. Unfortunately in practice the oath often takes second place to the paycheck. This conflict is why so many LEOs are changing careers or employers – they are too often asked to do things that violate their oath – like the enforcement of unconstitutional laws and executive orders.

        1. In my perfect world, an elected official who violated THEIR oath of office would be prosecuted for false swearing and removed from office. Like, their oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States – ALL of the Constitution, including the entire BIll of Rights!

  4. The confiscation or disallowance of guns is a common occurrence in centralized governments. The Nazis would not allow Jews to have firearms. They also would not allow firearms to be owned by the people in the countries they conquered. I am including a link in which the source does it’s best to gloss over gun control by the Nazis but In the end has to state what the actual policies were. https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1327/. Our gun control advocates find themselves in fine company.

  5. The left seems unable to follow the law. Law abiding citizens should oppose all Democrat candidates at all levels of government.

    1. Considering the long list of crimes Republicans have committed from Treason to insider trading to come garden fraud among many others , It’s hard not to laugh at your comment.

      1. Homes, you need a spare room where you can practice and improve your debating skills. Start with providing facts along with the accusations. If you are ten or less, I apologize, because at that age not all kids have the development necessary to debate things of this nature.

        This seems to be a repetitive problem.

        SM

      3. ‘Just a friendly reminder that the Democrat nominee who lost to Ron DeSantis last time was found passed out in his own puke at a gay meth orgy in a hotel room.’ ~tim young

  6. “…SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.”

    The right to keep and bear arms is not qualified by the Constitution and is, therefore, absolute.

    No elected official, appointed official, judge or Justice has any degree of power to modify the Constitution or Bill of Rights, outside of the parameters of the constitutional amendment process.

    That any or all of the aforementioned individuals do not enjoy or appreciate the 2nd Amendment does not provide them any degree of power to modify the 2nd Amendment, and none have any power to independently and arbitrarily modify the 2nd Amendment.

    The right to keep and bear arms is superior and holds dominion over any nullifying claims regarding the right to keep and bear arms.

    The right to keep and bear arms is provided to and enjoyed by individual Americans, not elected officials, appointed officials, judges or Justices who illegally and unconstitutionally usurp power they do not possess and are not provided by the Constitution.

    The “necessary and proper clause” applies merely to the powers “…vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof…” and the “necessary and proper clause” does not apply to powers not specifically and in particular vested by the Constitution, but arbitrarily conjured or imagined.
    _____________________________________________________________________________________________________

    2nd Amendment

    A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

    1. The Second Amendment did not until until 2008 and the judicial activism of Justice Scalia amended it and removed the language limiting that ownership to membership in a “well regulated militia”. allegedly protect any individual eight to bear arms. As a firmer Justice once said. The Constitutional is not a suicide pact! That’s true unless Scalia ans the Republicans are involved the suicide, murder and everything is on the table.

      1. “The Second Amendment did not until until 2008 and the judicial activism of Justice Scalia amended it and removed the language limiting that ownership to membership in a “well regulated militia”. allegedly protect any individual eight to bear arms.”

        Homes, maybe it is better if you don’t include any facts or explanations. The above is terrible. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Did you copy your response from a 10 year old?

        SM

      2. That you are a liar, does not bear.

        As a preamble, the Framers clarified the obvious, that, a militia is “…necessary to the security of a free State…,” and as any military force, a militia must be well regulated.

        The Framers, subsequently and completely separately, provided Americans the absolute right to keep and bear arms.

        That you are disingenuous and confused does not provide you any power to modify the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights.

        Americans have no care for your fraud and prevarications.

        Americans must have care for and comport with the “manifest tenor” of the Constitution.
        _____________________________________________________________________

        “…courts…must…declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void.”

        “…men…do…what their powers do not authorize, [and] what they forbid.”

        “[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”

        – Alexander Hamilton

      3. amended it and removed the language limiting that ownership to membership in a “well regulated militia

        You do know exactly who the well regulated militia is composed of right?

  7. General Milley said the quiet part out loud when describing the Democrat’s worldview on government policy. First of all, these people are not at all concerned about what they do being constitutional. If anything, the constitution is perceived as part of the problem. They also don’t think strategically, which is a reflection on the first point. They view themselves as problem-solving experts. You may want them brainstorming on a process management team, but you would never put them in a leadership position and certainly not as a member of the strategic planning team. A great metaphor for their worldview of government policy is the video of the man who decided to use a can a of spray paint and a lighter to get rid of a spider. The result would be best described by Milley as an operational and tactical success, but a strategic failure.

    https://youtu.be/dWqrez4P83I

  8. “Now Lamberth has cleared the way for claims for damages by as many as 4,500 people similarly arrested under the law the courts overturned in 2014. Those rising costs do not seem to register with the D.C. City Council. The city could appeal and argue that, at the time of the arrests, it was not clear that the underlying law was unconstitutional. Lamberth rejected that argument and held that the law was clearly unconstitutional when the city passed it.”
    **************************************************************

    The numbnuts in DC who once had a near conniption because a mayoral aide used the word “niggardly” to describe a budget item, now tell us they are shocked, shocked that their anti-American-Fly-In-the-Face-of-Heller gun law violated the Second Amendment. Of course, Lamberth got it right and now the poor citizens of DC will have to pay and pay for their absolute love affair with Dims who clearly despise them.

    Ain’t stupid government grand?

    1. As if on cue, the WaPo editorial board doubled-down on that stupidity:

      The ravages of guns extend beyond those whose deaths are tallied in the annual FBI report. There are the families who must struggle with senseless loss, those who are injured by gunfire and those who witnessed the horror,” The Post wrote. “Instead of putting in place sensible gun control — such as bans on assault weapons, universal background checks, safe-secure laws with stiff consequences — Congress has remained gridlocked.”

      “Meanwhile, Republican-led states have enacted laws — such as the one that went into effect in July in Tennessee that allows most adults to carry, openly or concealed, a handgun without a permit,” it added, seemingly trying to link less strict gun regulations in Tennessee with the deadly shooting that took place in the state last Thursday. “The rising and spreading murder statistics should raise the alarm that it’s time to stop despairing over the damage done by guns and do something about it.

      Here’s the response from Stephen Gutowski at The Reload:

      “This has to be one of the laziest editorials I’ve read in quite a while and there’s very little in the way of a salient argument to engage with,” he said. “On top of that, it appears The Post’s editorial board isn’t even familiar with the gun laws of their own city. They invoke a tragic accidental shooting in DC and immediately follow it up by suggesting universal background checks, an ‘assault weapons’ ban, and safe storage laws as a solution to America’s gun-violence problem. DC, of course, already has each one of those policies in place.”

      “I would say the editorial board should be embarrassed by such an obvious mistake. But, in our current media climate, it seems most commentators have reached a plane of existence beyond the point where embarrassment can be felt,” Gutowski added.

      2. The ravages of guns extend beyond those whose deaths are tallied in the annual FBI report. There are the families who must struggle with senseless loss, those who are injured by gunfire and those who witnessed the horror,” The Post wrote. “Instead of putting in place sensible gun control — such as bans on assault weapons, universal background checks, safe-secure laws with stiff consequences — Congress has remained gridlocked.”
        *****************************************
        Just a classic argumentum ad misericordiam!

        1. mespo,
          Thank you. I of course had to look it up and that’s exactly right. I won’t pretend to know Latin, or readily identify a textbook logical fallacy. But I recognize BS arguments that are made that will undermine our rights. I wrote yesterday about the Democrat’s worldview on policy-making. It’s borderline juvenile. They don’t think strategically (total impact), nor do they think constitutionally. They are narcissistic problem-solvers and any opposition to their myopic view of the world is part of the problem they need to solve. They appeal to emotion because emotion (not logic or reason) is what appeals to them. When their policies make things worse and not better, they naturally view this as evidence that outside forces are undermining their brilliant ideas. And of course the more they ruin the lives of their constituents, the more effective an appeal to emotions will be on the very people that are distraught over their disastrous policies.

  9. Just clarifying it:

    My second paragraph in my comment down there, is citation from the ruling of course.

  10. Important case.

    Just worth noting, that the main issues in this case, stemmed primarily from the fact, that some of plaintiffs were not residents of the district. So, they could not bear gun whatsoever. For, as non residents, they had to travel with their gun. To travel with their gun, was their only option in fact as non residents. So, the outcome or such prohibition, must be unconstitutional, for, they had zero option to bear gun for self defense.

    ” these provisions effectively banned non- residents from possesing a firearm. And all people, resident and non- resident alike, were prevented from carrying a weapon in public.”

    Thanks

  12. The same constitutional system that made Jim Crow laws illegal, made it illegal to discriminate against women, African-Americans, LGBT-Americans, etc is the very same system here.

    The Judicial Branch courts draw the constitutional legal boundaries that Congress, state legislatures, governors, mayors, police-chiefs and all governing officials MUST follow – it’s the supreme law of the land!

    DC was legally required to conform to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling just like a local mayor illegally abusing African-Americans during the Jim Crow era. No governing official in the United States has legal authority to violate any person’s rights – as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court.

  14. The right to Bare Arms should also be included in that overreaching analysis, although the leftists will probably find a way to make that illegal too.

  15. L2,

    You foolish man, everyone knows the words “Right to Bear Arms” means the Right to Wear a Wife Beater shirt. lol;)

    https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=wife+beaters+t+shirts&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-34000-13078-0&mkcid=2&keyword=wife+beaters+t+shirts&crlp=_1-1300-0-1-6&MT_ID=&geo_id=&rlsatarget=kwd-77240823867514%3Aloc-190&adpos=&device=c&mktype=&loc=78466&poi=&abcId=&cmpgn=329851240&sitelnk=&adgroupid=1235851221225674&network=s&matchtype=e&msclkid=9eafdbcb94211fb6021dba9e4f59788d&ul_noapp=true

  16. DC should be dissolved as a municipality and its functions returned to adjacent states. It has been run by criminals and incompetents for years and it shows.

      1. You are blind by far. Trump is not MR 10% .Trump does not have any crack addicted children whom banged their late siblings wife whom also funnels & launders money for daddy , Trump is not senile , Trump never colluded ( Russian hoax thingy ) . Meanwhile joe briben is Mr.10% and more. Has a cracked out son whom does launder money from various international back door deals for daddy. Briben is guilty of so much grift between Ukraine and china alone , briben has been at the pooblik trough for 50 years , briben associated with bonafide racists and even supported segregation , briben never made a penny outside his gooberment grifting and making sure his family mob got a taste in helping him launder money for his influence peddling schemes. I could go on about duplicitous criminal briben….. but you know the truths of this charlatan and those that support this are down with the sickness.
        So gummi puppet briben is the ultimate grift admin, crime , money laundering , influence peddling galore. Oh and selling out our allies and our military services. And now with inflation going on up , a demand to tax the citizenry yet more again to pay for tree equity amongst gobs more petty theft by rule of law than even Lucifer could shake a stick at. It’s briben for the win on the most corrupt admin since Hoover and FDR. So homey you are ludicrous , silly and definitely blinded by love of dear leader with his continual attacks on the constitution and his handlers in the shadows.

  17. The right to arm bears was the context of the original text of the Second Amendment. Some person who printed it for the final version was dyslectic and said “bear arms”.
    At the time of our revolution the militias was take in bears as members and they helped kill the Redcoats.

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