9th Circuit Rules There’s No Constitutional Right to Sell Firearms.

[Swordsmyth]

Does the Second Amendment protect an individual right to sell firearms to the public? No, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday in Teixeira v. County of Alameda (http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2017/10/10/13-17132.pdf), a landmark decision affirming the government’s constitutional authority to strictly regulate gun shops. The 9–2 ruling is a victory for gun safety advocates who feared judicial aggrandizement of the right to bear arms could invalidate myriad laws governing firearm commerce. The decision may be imperiled, however, if the plaintiffs appeal to the Supreme Court, where conservative justices are increasingly eager (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_breakfast_table/features/2017/supreme_court_june_2017/neil_gorsuch_is_everything_liberals_feared_and_mor e.html) to expand the scope of the Second Amendment.

Teixeira began as a challenge to a policy passed by Alameda County that imposed certain restrictions on gun sellers. Under the policy, all firearm retailers must obtain a permit, and none may operate near residential areas, schools, day care centers, other gun shops, or liquor stores. The three plaintiffs in the case wanted to open a gun shop but could not get a permit under county policy. They sued on behalf of themselves and their potential customers, alleging that the policy violated the Second Amendment in two ways—by preventing would-be customers from buying a gun, and by prohibiting them from selling firearms. A federal district court dismissed the claim, but a panel of judges for the 9th Circuit revived it (https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/05/16/13-17132.pdf) by a 2–1 vote. The court then elected to rehear it en banc, ultimately deciding that the county policy passed constitutional muster.

More at: http://amp.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/10/11/ninth_circuit_rules_there_s_no_second_amendment_ri ght_to_sell_firearms.html

[donnay]

There's no constitutional rule that says you can't.

[spudea]

Click bait BS headlines are the norm these days sigh. This has more to do with city/county zoning authority, not the second amendment. I think the 9th circuit probably got this one right.

[Swordsmyth]

Click bait BS headlines are the norm these days sigh. This has more to do with city/county zoning authority, not the second amendment. I think the 9th circuit probably got this one right.


Berzon then turned to the plaintiffs’ more substantial argument: whether the Second Amendment confers a right to sell firearms. She began by quoting D.C. v. Heller (https://www.oyez.org/cases/2007/07-290), the 2008 decision establishing an individual right to bear arms, which stated: “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on … laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,” which are “presumptively lawful regulatory measures.” That passage alone, Berzon writes, strongly suggests that retailers cannot “assert an independent, freestanding right to sell firearms under the Second Amendment.”


But to err on the safe side, Berzon conducted “a full textual and historical review.” To start, she analyzed the 1689 English Bill of Rights, the precursor to our Second Amendment, as well as William Blackstone’s influential commentaries on English law. These documents all frame the right to bear arms as one held by individuals, with no attendant right to engage in gun commerce. So did colonial laws in America—which, like the Second Amendment itself, were designed to preserve state militias, not to safeguard a freewheeling arms trade. Moreover, colonial governments routinely regulated the commercial sale of firearms. This history leads to the conclusion that, at the time of its ratification, the Second Amendment was not understood to create “a commercial entitlement to sell guns if the right of the people to obtain and bear arms was not compromised.”


To counter the weaknesses in their historical argument, the plaintiffs draw an analogy to the First Amendment. The freedom of speech, they note, protects the rights of bookshops; shouldn’t the right to bear arms similarly protect the rights of gun sellers? Not at all, Berzon wrote, for two reasons. First, the First Amendment is abstract, declaring that the government “shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” The Second Amendment, in contrast, specifically protects “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” (Emphasis mine.) A law that restricts the commercial sale of a particular book plainly abridges “the freedom of speech”; a law that limits the number of gun shops in a county does not infringe upon the people’s right to bear arms.


Second, the analogy fails because booksellers hold an independent free speech right to sell whatever expression they prefer, separate from the rights of their customers. “Selling, publishing, and distributing books and other written materials,” Berzon writes, is “itself expressive activity.” Booksellers “consequently have freestanding rights under the First Amendment to communicate with others through such protected activity.” Selling a gun, by comparison, “is not part or parcel of” the right of the people to “keep and bear arms.”



Here, Berzon makes a compelling analogy to abortion clinics that sue to block anti-abortion laws. These clinics can file suit because such laws burden their patients’ rights, not their own. “Never has it been suggested,” Berzon wrote, “that if there were no burden on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion, medical providers could nonetheless assert an independent right to provide the service for pay.”

If they have no right to sell then how are we to obtain arms to keep and bear?

This is an attempt to ban guns by banning their sale, it will not stop until there are NO gun stores.

[Dr.3D]

Does that mean the military can't buy firearms?

[Raginfridus]

Does that mean the military can't buy firearms?Only if they're war zoned to sell.

[dude58677]

I used to be a pre-law major and these legal people would stop at nothing to look for loopholes in the Constitution in favor of government. You also can't make it in the legal profession unless you are willing to violate the Constitution. It was so dishonest that lawyers were writing up new laws so they can make money litigating that I quit that major and took up a business major. Here they said that ethics prevails over law.

[phill4paul]

Nowhere in the Constitution is the Federal Government given purview of arms sales by individuals. Therefore the 10th Amendment applies.



The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,

nor prohibited by it to the States,

are reserved to the States respectively,

or to the people.

[Swordsmyth]

Nowhere in the Constitution is the Federal Government given purview of arms sales by individuals. Therefore the 10th Amendment applies.



The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,

nor prohibited by it to the States,

are reserved to the States respectively,

or to the people.

But the states can't violate your basic rights either, this case does.

[Weston White]

I wonder if a review of pornography producers and sex shop cases versus I Amend. violations would pertain to a helpful respective to this issue of selling, manufacturing firearms and the II Amend.

Also, something to think ponder, who many unintentional violations occur each day by people driving within 1,000 feet of a public school while CCW or transporting firearms in their vehicle/on their person? There are so many public schools it is not possible to not violate such utterly BS law.

[anaconda]

So does this mean folks have to build their own?

[donnay]

So does this mean folks have to build their own?

Yes with 3D printers. :cool:

[oyarde]

Alameda County ? 9th district ? Pfft .

[Brian4Liberty]

Alameda County ? 9th district ? Pfft .

Yep.

One could argue that gun stores are essential in maintaining the 2nd Amendment, therefore any laws that effectively eliminate all gun stores would be in violation of the 2nd.


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.

[Natural Citizen]

The founders would have hanged the Judge and any conspirators for Treason.

In 2017, Americans generally respond by making memes on Twitter and facebook. lolol.

[oyarde]

Yep.

One could argue that gun stores are essential in maintaining the 2nd Amendment, therefore any laws that effectively eliminate all gun stores would be in violation of the 2nd.

Easy argument . If it is legal ( and it is ) then places to purchase them must be as well .

[TheTexan]

Yes with 3D printers. :cool:

IMO, because they can so easily be used to print firearm suppressors, 3D printers should have to be registered as a suppressor, and pay 200$ ATF tax.

[fedupinmo]

IMO, because they can so easily be used to print firearm suppressors, 3D printers should have to be registered as a suppressor, and pay 200$ ATF tax.

I don't think plastic suppressors will work out so well.

[silverhandorder]

9th circuit is a joke.

[tommyrp12]

I don't think plastic suppressors will work out so well.

They won't.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7fqcYxV_b4