The Second Amendment Law Center is pleased to announce that some very impressive and persuasive amicus briefs were filed in the Third Circuit Court of Appeal on Monday supporting three critical cases pending before the Third Circuit: Delaware State Sportsmen’s Association v. Delaware DHS, Gray v. Jennings, and Graham v. Jennings. These cases all challenge Delaware’s law banning many semi-automatic firearms and standard capacity magazines. A District Court judge upheld the ban. The Court of Appeals is being asked to reverse that ruling and confirm that the ban is unconstitutional.
2ALC coordinated and supported the amicus briefing campaign to support the plaintiffs’ efforts to overturn the lower court’s ruling and have an injunction put into place that will block Delaware’s unconstitutional law that bans many semi-automatic firearms and standard capacity magazines..
Five impressive amicus briefs were filed yesterday, including a very significant brief from 20 states in support of gun owner rights: The fact that 20 states have publicly weighed in here, as these states did in the Illinois challenge to a semi-auto ban, is tremendously significant.
You can read the briefs by clicking the links below.
Association of Chiefs of Police, Independence Institute, and Professors
Delaware Association of Second Amendment Lawyers
National Shooting Sports Foundation
The briefs cover a wide range of important topics and set the record ight about how the constitutionality of a gun control law is to be evaluated under the test set out in the Supreme Court’s decision in NYSRPA V. Bruen last June.
Amicus briefs are essential because the attorneys for the parties in a case are not allowed to fund or participate in writing amicus briefs and therefore need a group like Second Amendment Law Center, with experience in Second Amendment issues, to step in and offer assistance.
Recently, 2ALC successfully coordinated similar amicus brief campaigns in Illinois (opposing Illinois ban on commonly possessed semi-automatic firearms and standard capacity magazines), and Hawaii, where briefs are due later this week. Currently, 2ALC is also working to support lawsuits challenging unconstitutional gun bans in Oregon, Washington, Washington D.C., and other jurisdictions hostile to 2A rights.
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg and others financially support anti-gun-owner groups, and these groups routinely submit amicus briefs supporting unconstitutional laws. This makes 2ALC’s amicus brief campaigns critical to success.
When House Bill 450 was signed into law on June 30, 2022, the State of Delaware criminalized possession, transportation, and sale of common firearms used by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes--mislabeling them as “assault weapons”--making it a felony for law-abiding citizens to exercise their fundamental right to keep and bear such arms. The State of Delaware’s laws deny hundreds of thousands of individuals who reside in Delaware their fundamental, individual right to keep and bear hundreds of common arms.
The Delaware State Sportsmen’s Association immediately jumped into action and filed a challenge to the state’s grossly unconstitutional law. Even though this law impacts the fundamental 2A rights of the people of Delaware, the district court denied their Motion for Preliminary Injunction. Issuing an injunction would have maintained the status quo while the rest of the case worked its way through the courts. Now on appeal in the Third Circuit, Delaware gun owners are again asking the court to preserve the status quo by overturning the lower court ruling and granting the preliminary injunction.
“We expect these amicus briefs will positively impact the court’s reasoning, and we are hopeful of a victory here. A well-coordinated amicus brief campaign can make the difference between success and failure, and that’s what the Second Amendment Law Center is all about. But we recognize the politics behind the issues and are prepared to take this to the Supreme Court if necessary.” Chuck Michel, President & General Counsel.
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