From the Second Amendment Foundation:
A federal court judge in Illinois has denied a City of Chicago motion for summary judgment and refused to dismiss a case challenging a ban of firearms sales within city limits that is backed by the Second Amendment Foundation.
It is the latest in a string of court battles between Chicago and SAF, causing SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb to observe, “We’ve already beat Chicago three times, in the McDonald case before the Supreme Court, and both Ezell 1 and Ezell 2 before the federal court of appeals. I’m reminded of the folk song by Peter, Paul and Mary that asked, ‘When will they ever learn’?”
The case involves a proposed gun shop called Second Amendment Arms (SAA), owned by R. Joseph Franzese, who submitted an application for a business license in July 2010. The city contends that the application was for an address in an area not zoned for commercial use, but Franzese argues that he was not advised about the zoning and that it had been advertised as commercial property. Besides, he contended that the city’s prohibition on gun sales “would have blocked (their) efforts no matter where (they) chose.”
“The City of Chicago under Rahm Emanuel is trying to be too clever by half,” Gottlieb said. “We would have thought by now that they would have ceased this pattern of spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on stubborn litigation, but the city seems determined to be dragged kicking and screaming into compliance with the Second Amendment.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert M. Dow, Jr., set Sept. 28 as the next date to discuss damages for the plaintiff in this case, which is known as Second Amendment Arms v. City of Chicago.
“Since losing its gun ban fight in the Supreme Court’s 2010 McDonald ruling,” Gottlieb noted, “Chicago has been digging its heels in deeper and deeper, throwing every kind of legal roadblock it could in an effort to delay what seems inevitable. The city has got to follow the law and the constitution, and as long as they keep fighting, we’ll keep suing.
“That’s what winning firearms freedom one lawsuit at a time is all about,” he concluded.
Like the District of Columbia, Chicago seems determined to oppose any anyone exercising Second Amendment rights for as long as they possibly can. Perhaps, at some point, the courts will tire of the endless, pointless games being played by the near-bankrupt city.
Chicago is willing to spend millions of dollars it does not have to fight court cases it is highly unlikely to win. All in the name of the ideological purity of preventing citizens from defending themselves.
It seems a losing game. But to the politicians who make these decisions, it’s only spending other people’s money. And it may bring in contributions to their political campaigns from big money donors, such as the Grand Vizier of disarmament, Michael Bloomberg.
Spend other people’s money with a good chance of stuffing your own campaign coffers…maybe these politicians aren’t so dumb after all.
©2017 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
“Perhaps, at some point, the courts will tire of the endless, pointless games being played by the near-bankrupt city.”
Of course not, that is job security for the courts!
I don’t think that there is a single federal court in this country that doesn’t have too many cases. plus the judges are appointed for life, so job security is never an issue.
A link to the ruling itself would be nice.
Here is the link. It is a pdf file:
http://14544-presscdn-0-64.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Order-Second-AA-v-Chicago.pdf
Shut down the Trace, confiscate their equipment and property and jail the lot.
So you don’t believe in the 1st amendment?
*I* sure do believe in the 1st Amendment, but …
“Another component of defense [of freedom(s)], is the separation, or segregation, of freedoms, since overlap can be the source of as equal a detriment to freedom as forfeiture. A concise example of this can be viewed in the overlap in the exercise of freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution with regard to free speech and free press.
Freedom of the press, is the affirmed freedom to protect, through mass media, the citizens of the United States from a secret and tyrannical government; thereby being a freedom protected by an armed citizenry [1]. It is not an affirmation of freedom from any other entity. It is not, also, a freedom bestowed upon an individual member of the “press”, or their entire species, because they happen to be a more noble creature than the average citizen. It is not freedom of speech; it does not permit, or allow for megaphone amplification to shout down or over another citizen’s free speech. It does not endure the marketing of falsehood, regardless of foreknowledge or intent. As such, when pooled with the nightly news report or the daily pages it must be rejected wholly.”
[J.M. Thomas R., TERMS, 2012, pg. 103]
“A federal court judge in Illinois has denied a City of Chicago motion for summary judgment and refused to dismiss a case challenging a ban of firearms sales within city limits that is backed by the Second Amendment Foundation.”
Did the SAF actually pay a grade school dropout to write that sentence? Because if we didn’t know anything about SAF, it would seem that the ban was backed by the Second Amendment Foundation.
I hope they get a ton of dough. I won’t buy a gun(or ammo) in Chiraq(or Cook Co.) anyways but justice. $25handgun tax and a boo-lit tax and 10.25% sales extortion tax insures a big middle finger from moi. Hey Chiraq just lost a suit for $148000000 because shoddy maintainence caused a shelter to sever a girls spine. They REALLY got no bucks…
That’s Crook County, and Madigan and Cullerton have the $$!!
Not until those that seriously and repeatedly infring on the most important Constitutional rights are literally put to death, or at risk of facing the death penalty, these nakedly flagrant, fascist attempts to subvert the constitution will continue.
Really messed up that Bloomberg’s fortune itself partially stems from reporting on gun violence rampant among the most gun-controlled areas of America, and arguably as a result of those restrictions. Creating the news is easier than finding it, as usual.
Really? Bloomberg is a business newspaper, not a regular news outlet. And on top of that, this case has nothing to do with Bloomberg or the news or fake news. Did this comment end up on the wrong post?
Consider the websites such as TheTrace which Bloomberg owns and (presumably) makes a profit from. He said Bloomberg, as in the man, and partially. I’d say it’s a sound statement.
I’ve read the opinion and order, and I don’t understand what is so important. For one, the motion for summary judgement merely attacked the Plaintiff’s standing to bring the action on the basis that the location he selected for his business was actually zoned as multifamily residential, and his permit would have been properly denied on that basis. There is an issue of fact, unresolved at this stage of the proceedings, whether Plaintiff was actually told this, but that is a question for another day. Second, the city ordinance was repealed four years after it was passed, i.e., about three years ago. The result of the decision is that Plaintiff can attempt to prove–at trial–that he should be able to recover damages for the period of time the ordinance was in effect that prohibited all gun stores in city limits. The judge commented that this may be an almost insurmountable obstacle, not only because he cannot show how much his store would have earned at that location (since it never ever opened), but also because he made no attempt to open another store at a different location after the a=ordinance was rescinded, strongly suggesting that he never really intended to do so, but instead was seeking to attack the ordinance itself. Without damages, he goes home empty handed.
To put it simply: THERE WAS NO BURNING SECOND AMENDMENT ISSUE ADDRESSED OR DECIDED BY THE TRIAL COURT IN THIS DECISION AND ORDER. It hardly qualifies as a victory for second amendment rights–unless you are marketing for donations, as seems to be the case here. And in fact, since the ordinance is history, no second amendment issue will ever be decided by the court or jury in this case.
Lat but not leas, these cases cost the city nothing–unless it loses and has to pay the other side’s fees and costs. The City is represented by its own (employee) attorneys, who would be getting paid to do something else if not this.
“Franzese argues that he was not advised about the zoning and that it had been advertised as commercial property”
If that is his best argument, Hes gonna lose. Not being “advised ” about the law (regardless of how dumb it is) and how it was “advertized” has no relevance to the case. Thats like saying I wasn’t “advised” that I couldn’t have a shooting range in my front yard and that the seller advertised that I could. It doesn’t make it so.
We need to go after the idiotic zoning laws in the first place.
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