Fouts v. Bonta
https://twitter.com/gunpolicy/status/15 ... HErozBIB3g
Case:Firearms Policy Coalition
@gunpolicy
California filed a response to the letter today, saying that "billies, including police batons, are particularly susceptible to criminal use and are appropriately reserved for trained law enforcement personnel."
https://dockets.justia.com/docket/circu ... 9/21-56039
Background:
https://mslegal.org/cases/fouts-v-bonta/
California, for instance, has, for more than a century, imposed a near-universal ban on the possession of certain club-type weapons, including so-called “billy clubs,” exempting only police and certain security guards from owning them. This, in our view, is an unconstitutional infringement of the Second Amendment. But the district court refused to even evaluate the law because, in the Ninth Circuit, courts automatically consider any “longstanding” law to be constitutional. The Ninth Circuit claims that they are applying Heller, but in reality, Heller implies that certain “longstanding” regulations may be presumed to be constitutional. The presumption must be rebuttable. Without allowing individuals to seek to prove even longstanding regulations are not constitutional the Ninth Circuit may inadvertently rubber-stamp longstanding infringements on people’s rights, rather than uphold constitutional regulations.
Now two military veterans, Russell Fouts and Tan Miguel Tolentino, are suing California’s attorney general to challenge this unconstitutionally “longstanding” ban. MSLF’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms has filed a brief supporting Russell and Tan, arguing that the mere longevity of such a law is no guarantor of its constitutionality or legitimacy.