CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb is hopeful that the Supreme Court will accept the group’s case for review. (Dave Workman)
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has petitioned the United States Supreme Court for review of its case challenging the long-standing ban on interstate handgun sales to law-abiding citizens from other states.
This case has been lingering since the late days of the Obama administration.
The case, known as Mance v. Whitaker, comes out of the Fifth Circuit and involves a Texas firearms retailer and two would-be customers who reside in Washington, D.C. A federal district court earlier ruled that the interstate handgun transfer ban is facially unconstitutional, which was subsequently reversed by a Fifth Circuit panel. The Fifth Circuit denied the petition for rehearing en banc by a fractured vote of 8-7. Plaintiffs in the case include CCRKBA, Andrew and Tracy Hanson of Washington, D.C. and Texas firearms retailer Fredric Mance. They are represented by attorney Alan Gura.
At the time of the initial ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, wrote, “(T)he Court finds that the federal interstate handgun transfer ban burdens conduct that falls within the scope of the Second Amendment.”
He later added, “By failing to provide specific information to demonstrate the reasonable fit between this ban and illegal sales and lack of notice in light of the Brady Act amendments to the 1968 Gun Control Act, the ban is not substantially related to address safety concerns. Thus, even under intermediate scrutiny, the federal interstate handgun transfer ban is unconstitutional on its face.”
Funding support for this lawsuit is provided by the Second Amendment Foundation, which is CCRKBA’s sister organization and specializes in education and litigation. This is a rare case, because CCRKBA normally does not get involved in litigation.
“The ban on interstate handgun sales was adopted decades ago,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “prior to the advent of the National Instant Check System that is now in place. The Hansons have essentially been denied the ability to legally purchase a handgun from a licensed retailer because of this prohibition.”
In the years since the NICS system went online, it has seemed unnecessarily restrictive to prevent such sales because a person who can pass a NICS background check in their home state, or in this case, the District of Columbia, would be able to pass the same background check in another state.
“After all,” Gottlieb observed, “if a citizen is law-abiding in his home state, he or she is going to be law-abiding in a different state where they might find a firearm they want to buy, but the interstate sales ban prevents that.
“Citizens can purchase all sorts of other goods across state lines,” he added, “but why not the one tool that is specifically mentioned and protected by the Constitution’s Second Amendment? That simply defies logic and common sense.”
“But our case goes to the heart of what appears to be a reluctance in the lower courts to enforce the Second Amendment even now, more than ten years after the landmark Heller ruling and eight years after the McDonald ruling,” Gottlieb said in a statement to the press. “This continuing problem is mentioned in our petition to the high court.”
He also noted that until now, the makeup of the high court was different. With the addition of Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and more recently Brett Cavanaugh, the court has a more conservative, and potentially pro-Second Amendment disposition.
There has not been a Second Amendment case before the court since the 2010 McDonald ruling. That was a SAF case and it was successfully argued by Gura.
“This case has been in the system for quite some time,” Gottlieb noted. “We’re hopeful that the Supreme Court, with its new makeup, will grant our request for review.”
