|
BELLEVUE, WA – Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has joined 15 of his anti-Second Amendment Democrat colleagues in an amicus brief to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, asking for a reversal of a district court’s decision to block enforcement of New York’s so-called Concealed Carry Improvement Act.
Ferguson joined attorneys general from the District of Columbia, Illinois, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and the Northern Mariana Islands.
“Bob Ferguson has never met a gun control scheme he didn’t like, and he has been advocating for restrictions on the rights of Evergreen State residents for years,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “It is hardly surprising to see his name on the list of Democrat attorneys general supporting language in an amicus brief that is simply mind-numbing in its contempt for the right to keep and bear arms.”
The attorneys general declare in their brief, “The challenged provisions of New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act (‘CCIA’) fit squarely within a long tradition of constitutionally acceptable regulations designed to meet states’ responsibility to protect their residents.”
“Just like the unconstitutional statute it replaced,” Gottlieb observed, “the CCIA is written to prevent law-abiding citizens from exercising their rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment to bear arms for their personal protection. One should never be required to meet arbitrary mandates established by the government in order to exercise a fundamental right, whether it is a requirement to show ‘good cause’ to get a carry permit, or meet the equally-arbitrary definition of ‘good moral character,’ which is subjective and wide open to abuse by government officials like Bob Ferguson and others.
“Ferguson and his co-signers have already demonstrated they want to place as many restrictions on the Second Amendment rights of their citizens as they can get away with,” Gottlieb said. “New York’s CCIA is an insult to the rights of Empire State gun owners, and a slap at the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last year that nullified the state’s previous outrageous law.”
The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 720,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
