SCOTUS Asked To Consider Silvester et al.

[Subdeacon Joe]

https://www.calgunsfoundation.org/u_s_supreme_court_urged_to_reverse_9th_circuit_gun_control_ruling

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. (December 20, 2017)­­­­­­ – Today, plaintiffs in a long-running Second Amendment lawsuit challenging the State of California’s 10-day “waiting period laws” for firearm transfers have filed a brief at the United States Supreme Court urging the Justices to take up the case or issue a summary reversal of the 9^thCircuit’s decision.

The case, captioned Jeff Silvester, et al. v. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, seeks to overturn a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision and clarify the standards that all lower courts should use when reviewing Second Amendment lawsuits. Since the Supreme Court’s landmark McDonald v. Chicago decision, state and federal courts throughout the country have used wildly different approaches in scrutinizing laws that burden or eliminate the right to keep and bear arms.

The Plaintiffs and Petitioners’ reply brief, authored by Supreme Court and appellate attorney Erik. S. Jaffe of Washington, D.C., opens by pulling no punches: “After a waiver, a [call for response], and an extension of time, the [State’s] Brief in Opposition illustrates perfectly the contempt into which the Ninth Circuit has brought this Court’s precedents. A candid response would have confessed error and moved on. The response filed by the California Attorney General instead demonstrates a near complete lack of concern for precedent, procedure, or the risk of correction by this Court.”

The brief goes on to draw a comparison with the Hans Christian Anderson classic novel The Emperor’s New Clothes. “In the Ninth Circuit, the government no longer bears the burden of proof as a practical matter, speculation and conjecture now trump a trial court’s thorough and detailed findings of fact, and, we are told, the government deserves deference regarding legislative and social ‘facts’ even where there is no evidence that it reviewed or considered such supposed facts….We can either go along with the fiction of constitutional scrutiny – what lovely garments you have, oh west-coast emperors – or we can candidly acknowledge that the imperial Ninth Circuit has no constitutional clothes.”

“If the Supreme Court were to allow the Ninth Circuit to continue ignoring its precedents and abandoning longstanding principles of law, then a real crisis of confidence in the integrity of the courts may yet be on the horizon,” said Brandon Combs, an individual plaintiff in the case as well as the executive director of institutional plaintiff The Calguns Foundation. “We are cautiously optimistic that the Supreme Court will use this excellent case as a vehicle to re-establish order among the nation’s lower courts and remind them that the Second Amendment is not a second-class right.”

“On behalf of all of us at The Calguns Foundation, we want to thank our supporters for their generosity in seeing this case all way through this Supreme Court briefing, the amici who invested time and treasure in their own briefs, and especially lead plaintiff Jeff Silvester,” commented CGF Chairman Gene Hoffman. “Jeff has not only been a perfect plaintiff, he has showed the courage of millions of California gun owners unwilling to give up.”

The case is scheduled to be considered during the Court’s January 5 conference. A copy of the Silvester petition and briefing can be viewed or downloaded at https://www.calgunsfoundation.org/silvester.

From that link, a link to the entire brief:

https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/thecalgunsfoundation/pages/40/attachments/original/1513799373/Silvester_Cert_Pet_Reply-Final.pdf?1513799373
 

[John Boy]

NJ 2nd Amendment Society has had a SCOTUS request that can't get out off Committee