by The US Supreme Court has denied a writ of certiorari to Remington in their appeal of the Connecticut Supreme Court’s ruling. That ruling allowed the lawsuit by some of the families of the Newtown murders against Remington to go forward. The Connecticut Supreme Court had said Remington would not be protected by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
The denial was in the Order List released this morning.
As I mentioned earlier, the anti-PLCAA forces had brought out the big legal guns with Obama’s former Solicitor General. His argument must have swayed enough justices that they voted against taking the case.
You can read more about the Connecticut Supreme Court’s ruling in the case here.
This means that the lawsuit against Remington will go to trial in Connecticut Superior Court and that the plaintiffs can go on a fishing expedition through Remington’s records.
To be blunt, this denial of cert sucks. It turns on its head the supremacy of Federal law and makes a mockery of a law passed by Congress to prevent exactly what the plaintiffs are seeking to do.
UPDATE: Dave Hardy, 2A scholar and attorney, gives his take on the SCOTUS denial of cert in the case. He still thinks the plaintiffs have a long way to go before they win.
Big point: the trial court dismissed the suit for “failure to state a claim.” This is the first stage at which a suit can be reviewed. Dismissal is only proper if it is based on the pleading, bare written allegations. The CT Supremes said only that it couldn’t be, at this stage. Plaintiff still have to prove their allegations (after discovery, they can be challenged by a motion for summary judgement, and if that’s denied, fought at trial). The CT Supremes even allowed that plaintiff may have to surmount “herculean” barriers to win.
I’ll defer to Dave given his long experience as an attorney.
There should be no surprise about this, the Supreme Court has denied cert to every firearms case appealed to them after McDonald, going so far as to reverse one of the most important findings of Heller, that the state can’t prevent you from keeping your guns handy for self-defense in the home (the SF “lock up your safety” case). This includes a case after Kavanaugh was seated, he did after all clerk for Kennedy and was the latter’s hand picked successor. Although Roberts’ blatant turn to the dark side is a more likely explanation.
I’ve been advocating caution about the single exception to this, the case about NYC forbidding transportation of your guns outside of the city, since that’s so egregious and can be decided on the narrowest of grounds. This case is as egregious in its own way, the court has judicially nullified the PLCAA and unless that’s reversed, perhaps by Trump getting to replace one of the Leftist 4, lawfare is going to take out a lot of the companies we buy our guns and ammo from, and generally raise prices in the process.
The tyrants gonna do, what the tyrants gonna do. FUCK `EM!
It is up to us, the free citizens, to ignore their illegal/unconstitutional/intolerable acts. Whether by legislation, executive order or regulation by the administrative branch, or activist court, they are all equally abhorrent. I contend that all 53,000+ infringements on the books nationwide are acts of treason, that must be repealed immediately. Anyone proposing another single one is simply a traitor that needs to swing from a rope. My seven principles of Armed Civil Disobedience are easy to follow, once the tyrants have declared you a paper felon criminal:
DENY-DEFY-DECEIVE-EVADE-RESIST-SMUGGLE-DEFEND
http://tfbel.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-finer-details-of-armed-civil.html
At first I thought you were a Fedposter, but it seems not. Still, advising the posting of “anonymous” videos of illegal smuggling is horrifically bad advice. I guarantee you essentially none of us have the combination of technical and OPSEC skills and knowledge necessary to do that with any assurance it can’t be deanonymized.
As the last paragraph’s point 3, bayonets are still a thing.
Actually I am not so sure that this violates the Supremacy Clause. It is my understanding that PLCAA has a weasel clause regarding violation of state laws.
The point of the lawsuit was never to win but to bankrupt manufacturers with legal expenses. That strategy is the reason why we have PLCAA in the first place.
It takes only 4 votes to grant cert. Pretty much sure the 5 leftists (counting Roberts) were against it but one of the conservatives had to have been there too. For the moment, I am assuming that it was a strategic vote to prevent Roberts from killing the PLCAA altogether.
We really need to end the secrecy about cert votes. Given the small percentage of cases the Supremes take, this is probably the most important decision they make.
Concur with Richard. This is about bankrupting Remington. Dammit…