Bateman v Perdue

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Hurricane Earl and the Bateman Case

September 2, 2010 by

This news release from Grass Roots North Carolina, one of the organizational plaintiffs in Bateman v. Perdue, helps put the case into perspective. The entire state of North Carolina is now under a state of emergency.

GRNC Alert 09-01-10:

Gov. Perdue’s Order Suspends Rights of NC Gun Owners

HIS NAME IS EARL AND YOUR RIGHTS ARE NIL

With the approach of Hurricane Earl, the North Carolina state of
emergency statute (N.C. Gen. Stat. 14-288.7) has once again reared its
ugly head. Gov. Perdue has declared a state of emergency for the
entire state of North Carolina. As a result it is a Class 1
misdemeanor “for any person to transport or possess off his own
premises any dangerous weapon or substance.” There is no exception for
recreational shooting. There is no exception for hunting. There is no
exception for having a concealed carry permit. The prohibition applies
to all possession — open carry, concealed carry and transportation in
a vehicle.

GUESS WHAT SATURDAY IS!

Anybody? That’s right… Dove season opens Saturday at noon. Unless
Earl is well past NC and the SoE has been lifted (not likely), every
hunter who doesn’t live in the dove field is a criminal.

Following the state of emergency declared this winter in King, GRNC
attempted legislation to solve this problem. Now GRNC is part of the
lawsuit filed against the state of N.C. on this very issue. Attorney
Alan Gura – who won the Heller and McDonald decisions affirming the
Second Amendment as an individual right and overturning the gun bans
in DC and Chicago – helms this case.

Elections have consequences and this November, you have a unique
opportunity to change the landscape of the N.C. General Assembly. Not
only would this allow legislation like that attempted by GRNC to pass,
it will set up a friendlier environment for the redistricting of U.S.
Congressional districts. Remember last time this allowed Brad Miller
to custom design the 13th district just for himself. Elections have
consequences. Make them positive.

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Bateman et al v. Perdue et al – Meet the Attorneys

July 23, 2010 by

The City of King filed a motion of an extension today which was granted. They were the last of the defendants to request and be granted an extension. They will have until August 17th to respond to the complaint. Governor Perdue and Secretary Young have until August 15th and Stokes County has until August 12th for their response.

With the filing by the City of King, we now know all the legal players in this contest.

Plaintiffs

Alan Gura needs no introduction after winning both the Heller case and the McDonald case. He will be appearing as a pro hac vice attorney. This means he is appearing with the permission of the court as he is not licensed in North Carolina.

Kearns Davis, a partner in the law firm of Brooks, Pierce, McLendon, Humphrey and Leonard is the lead North Carolina attorney for the plaintiffs. Brooks, Pierce is a mid-size law firm with offices in both Greensboro and Raleigh, NC. He is a 1995 graduate of the University of North Carolina Law School where he was the managing editor of the law review. He has been listed in “The Best Lawyers in America” for 2010 and is listed as a “North Carolina Super Lawyer”.

Davis is being assisted by Andrew Tripp of Brooks, Pierce. Tripp is a 2004 graduate of Duke Law where he was managing editor of the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law. After graduation, he served as a clerk for District Court Judge Terrence Boyle of the Eastern District of North Carolina. Interestingly enough, Alan Gura served as a clerk for Judge Boyle a few years earlier.


Defendants

Mark Davis, Special Deputy Attorney General for the State of North Carolina, will be representing Bev Perdue and Reuben Young as they have been sued in their roles as Governor and Secretary of the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety respectively. According to Martindale-Hubbell, Davis is a 1991 graduate of the University of North Carolina Law School. Davis serves in the Special Litigation Section of the NC Department of Justice. A quick Google search seems to indicate he handles many Federal and appellate level cases for the Attorney Generals office.

Representing Stokes County are Henry Jones, Jr. and Lori Jones of the law firm Jordan, Price, Wall, Gray, Jones, and Carlton in Raleigh. Mr. Jones is a 1978 graduate of the University of Richmond Law School. Among his past activities was serving as Chairman of the Wake County Democratic Party from 1987 through 1991. He is AV Peer Review rated by the Martindale-Hubbell.

Lori Jones is an associate in Jordan, Price and is a 2004 graduate of the University of North Carolina Law School. According to the Jordan Price web site, her practice focuses on general civil litigation matters. All the filings submitted by Stokes County have been signed by her to date.

Finally, Kevin Williams of Bell, Davis, and Pitt in Winston-Salem represents the City of King. Williams is a 1998 graduate of Wake Forest University Law School where he made law review. He is listed in “Best Lawyers in America” for 2010 under Commercial Litigation. He is also listed as a “Rising Star” in the North Carolina Super Lawyers.

So there you have it. By mid-August we should start seeing the responses from the defendants and will get some idea of how hard they plan to fight.

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Short Update on Bateman et al v. Perdue et al

July 16, 2010 by

Governor Beverly Perdue and Sec. of Crime Control Reuben Young were granted an extension until August 15th in which to file their response to the suit challenging North Carolina’s emergency powers gun ban, Bateman v. Perdue.

No word yet on whether the City of King or Stokes County has also been granted an extension.

I guess we will have to wait a bit longer to see what North Carolina plans to do regarding this law. Darn!

UPDATE: Stokes County was granted an extension until August 12th. So far the City of King has not been heard from.

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New York Times is Still Fighting the Last War

July 11, 2010 by

Today’s New York Times ran an editorial entitled “The Hard Work of Gun Control”. While it was originally published on July 9th, they saw fit to re-run it in their Sunday paper just in case the elites didn’t read it the first time.

Like the dissenters in the McDonald decision, they are still fighting the Heller decision. It must have killed them to acknowledge that, “the law of the land is now that people have a constitutional right to a gun in their home for self-defense.”

They did concede that they thought Chicago’s new gun law was flawed and would likely be overturned.

Cities and states have a need to be extremely tough in limiting access to guns, but they need to do it with more forethought than went into the Chicago ordinance. Lawmakers there sensibly limited residents to one operable handgun per home, with a strict registration and permitting process. But residents are not allowed to buy a gun in the city. They must receive firearms training, but ranges are illegal in the city. Chicago lawmakers sloughed off on the suburbs the responsibility to regulate sales and training. As a result, more people will travel more miles to transport guns.

The law is likely to draw heightened equal-protection scrutiny from skeptical judges at all levels. Chicago would have been better off allowing gun sales under the strict oversight of the police department, which could then better check the backgrounds and movements of every buyer and seller. The District of Columbia passed a largely similar ordinance last year after its law was struck down by the court. But it permits sales at the few gun shops in the district, and a federal judge upheld that ordinance after it was challenged. It could stand as a model for other cities.

They thought the lawsuit against the new Chicago gun law was over-the-top.

It disputes virtually every aspect of the law as a violation of the Second Amendment and poses ludicrous hypothetical situations to show that everyone needs a gun. “If an elderly widow lives in an unsafe neighborhood and asks her son to spend the night because she has recently received harassing phone calls,” the lawsuit complains, “the son may not bring his registered firearm with him to his mother’s home as an aid to the defense of himself and his mother.” Putting granny in the middle of a neighborhood firefight is preferable to having her simply call the police?

I guess they never heard of the wait times for police response to 911 calls and that the police have no legal obligation to protect you.

They conclude with a call for “tough but sensible” laws and with a shot at Alan Gura and “the gun lobby”.

The gun lobby is going to attack virtually every gun ordinance it can find, if only to see what it can get away with now. (Last week, the same lawyers who brought the Chicago and Washington cases sued North Carolina, challenging a law that prohibits carrying weapons during a state of emergency.)

All I can say as a North Carolinian is “Go Alan!”

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Paper Recognizes Futility of NC’s Emergency Powers Gun Ban

July 9, 2010 by 2 Comments

The Greensboro Daily News ran an editorial yesterday regarding the emergency powers gun ban that is being challenged by Alan Gura, the Second Amendment Foundation, and Grass Roots NC. They strongly suggested that the state change the law so that it didn’t get to the Supreme Court like the McDonald case.

The unsigned editorial noted that:

Surely, legislators had something else in mind other than banning guns in cold weather when they wrote this measure decades ago. And it certainly would not be worth enforcing this law, except when someone is using the gun to commit a crime — stealing firewood, maybe.

From my research of the time period when this bill was first passed, I think the General Assembly intended to keep firearms out of the hands of demonstrators and civil rights protesters in the late 1960s.

The Daily News concluded:

There should be a compelling reason why someone who is the legal owner of a firearm should be barred from carrying it from his home to a shooting range, even if the governor has declared a state of emergency because of cold weather. That might make sense in some kinds of emergencies — a breakdown of civic order, for example — but the law should make distinctions. The blanket prohibition doesn’t seem justified, and the state should stipulate that it is not enforceable as it’s written.

This case isn’t one that should go all the way to the Supreme Court for resolution.

They are most certainly correct that this is a case in which the State of North Carolina should fold and fold quickly.

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The Next Case: Bateman et al v. Perdue et al

June 29, 2010 by 2 Comments

Alan Gura’s next case has a name. The official title is Bateman et al v. Perdue et al, Case No. 5:10-cv-265, and it was filed yesterday with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Western Division.

The named plaintiffs are Michael Bateman, Virgil Green, and Forrest Minges, Jr as well as Grass Roots North Carolina and the Second Amendment Foundations. They are seeking to overturn the North Carolina General Statue that forbids the carrying, possession, sale or purchase of firearms and ammunition during declared states of emergency.

Specifically, they are asking the U. S. District Court for:

An order permanently enjoining defendants, their officers, agents, servants,
employees, and all persons in active concert or participation with them who receive actual notice of the injunction, from enforcing N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 14-288.7, 14-288.12(b)(4), 14-288.13(b), 14-288.14(a), and 14-288.15(d), forbidding the carrying, possession, sale or purchase of firearms and ammunition during declared states of emergency.

In February 2010, the City of King and Stokes County declared a state of emergency due to heavy snowfall and local power outages. The proclamation from the City of King forbade the sale or purchase of firearms and ammunition, as well as the possession of firearms and ammunition off an individual’s premises. If you had a North Carolina Concealed Handgun Permit, it didn’t matter as the state of emergency proclamation superceded it.

I have posted the entire complaint and other filings on Scribd. You can read the main filing here.

Bateman v Perdue 1-Main

UPDATE: Paul Valone, President of Grass Roots North Carolina and the Charlotte Gun Rights Examiner, has more on the background of the case in his column.