Amicus brief in Supreme Court cert. petition argues that Alameda County, Calif., ban on new gun stores violates the Second Amendment.
Can a county prohibit all new gun stores within its jurisdiction? That question is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, in a petition for certiorari. Today I filed an amicus brief arguing that the Court should grant cert.
The case began several years ago, when Alameda County forbade John Teixeira and his partners to open a gun store anywhere within the jurisdiction of the county. The plaintiffs are represented by Alan Gura (winning attorney in District of Columbia v. Heller, and many other important Second Amendment cases), and Don Kilmer (the leading pro-Second Amendment attorney in Northern California). They lost in the district court, and then won a 2-1 decision from a Ninth Circuit panel. (Here’s my previous VC article analzying the panel decision). The County then petitioned for en banc review, which was granted. (Here’s Eugene Volokh’s article on one of the briefs arguing against an en banc grant.)
En banc, the majority held that there is no Second Amendment right to engage in firearms commerce. According to the majority, gun laws from the colonial and founding periods show that: 1. Some colonies sometimes banned gun sales to Indians. 2. Colonial governments fostered the arms business, such as by buying firearms to give to militiamen who could not afford their own. From this historical record, the majority concluded that government control of firearms commerce was so pervasive such commerce falls outside the Second Amendment.
by David Kopel
