matterhorn762
Member
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2004
- Messages
- 14
In 2003 the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to strike down the federal law illegalizing the home making of machine guns, on grounds that the federal government's ban on homemade machineguns is abusive of the government's authority to regulate interstate commerce.
The US challenged this ruling and took it to the Supreme Court. This is the Supreme Court docket regaring the case:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/04-617.htm
And this is the original Circuit Court ruling:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0210318p.pdf
I'm trying to find out the status of this case. It was supposed to go to the Supreme Court for conference review in January of this year, but there was no ruling on it. It is not on schedule for the month of April either, which means it will not be heard at least until October, when the court comes back from their vacation. So my question is... isn't there some statute of limitations on this? Can the Supreme Court just have an indefinite pending status? If you know anything about this, let me know what are the actual regulations on this, and if possible, the links to them. I ask this because I called the Supreme Court public information number and they claim that there is no limit at all, meaning this case can remain in legal limbo forever.
For those interested in more details of the Circuit Court ruling, here is a summary:
"We start by considering the first and fourth prongs of the Morrison test, as we have deemed them the most important. See McCoy, 323 F.3d at 1119. The first prong is not satisfied here. Possession of a machinegun is not, without more, economic in nature. Just like the statute struck down in Lopez, section 922(o) “is a criminal statute that by its terms has nothing to do with ‘commerce’ or any sort of economic enterprise, however broadly one might define those terms.†Lopez, 514 U.S at 561. Unlike in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), where growing wheat in one’s backyard could be seen as a means of saving money that would otherwise have been spent in the open market, a homemade machinegun may be part of a gun collection or may be crafted as a hobby. Or it may be used for illegal purposes. Whatever its intended use, without some evidence that it will be sold or transferred—and there is none here—its relationship to interstate commerce is highly attenuated.
"Moreover, the regulation itself does not have an economic purpose: whereas the statute in Wickard was enacted primarily to control the market price of wheat, id. at 115, there is no evidence that section 922(o) was enacted to regulate commercial aspects of the machinegun business. More likely, section 922(o) was intended to keep machineguns out of the hands of criminals—an admirable goal, but not a commercial one." . . .
"This case fails Morrison’s other requirements as well.
"As we stated earlier, section 922(o) contains no jurisdictional element anchoring the prohibited activity to interstate commerce. Congress also failed to make any legislative findings when it enacted the statute. While neither Lopez nor Morrison requires Congress to make findings every time it passes a law under its Commerce Clause power, the Supreme Court did note the importance of findings where—as here—such findings would “enable [a court] to evaluate the legislative judgment that the activity in question substantially affected interstate commerce, even though no such substantial effect was visible to the naked eye.†Lopez, 514 U.S. at 563."
The US challenged this ruling and took it to the Supreme Court. This is the Supreme Court docket regaring the case:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/04-617.htm
And this is the original Circuit Court ruling:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0210318p.pdf
I'm trying to find out the status of this case. It was supposed to go to the Supreme Court for conference review in January of this year, but there was no ruling on it. It is not on schedule for the month of April either, which means it will not be heard at least until October, when the court comes back from their vacation. So my question is... isn't there some statute of limitations on this? Can the Supreme Court just have an indefinite pending status? If you know anything about this, let me know what are the actual regulations on this, and if possible, the links to them. I ask this because I called the Supreme Court public information number and they claim that there is no limit at all, meaning this case can remain in legal limbo forever.
For those interested in more details of the Circuit Court ruling, here is a summary:
"We start by considering the first and fourth prongs of the Morrison test, as we have deemed them the most important. See McCoy, 323 F.3d at 1119. The first prong is not satisfied here. Possession of a machinegun is not, without more, economic in nature. Just like the statute struck down in Lopez, section 922(o) “is a criminal statute that by its terms has nothing to do with ‘commerce’ or any sort of economic enterprise, however broadly one might define those terms.†Lopez, 514 U.S at 561. Unlike in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), where growing wheat in one’s backyard could be seen as a means of saving money that would otherwise have been spent in the open market, a homemade machinegun may be part of a gun collection or may be crafted as a hobby. Or it may be used for illegal purposes. Whatever its intended use, without some evidence that it will be sold or transferred—and there is none here—its relationship to interstate commerce is highly attenuated.
"Moreover, the regulation itself does not have an economic purpose: whereas the statute in Wickard was enacted primarily to control the market price of wheat, id. at 115, there is no evidence that section 922(o) was enacted to regulate commercial aspects of the machinegun business. More likely, section 922(o) was intended to keep machineguns out of the hands of criminals—an admirable goal, but not a commercial one." . . .
"This case fails Morrison’s other requirements as well.
"As we stated earlier, section 922(o) contains no jurisdictional element anchoring the prohibited activity to interstate commerce. Congress also failed to make any legislative findings when it enacted the statute. While neither Lopez nor Morrison requires Congress to make findings every time it passes a law under its Commerce Clause power, the Supreme Court did note the importance of findings where—as here—such findings would “enable [a court] to evaluate the legislative judgment that the activity in question substantially affected interstate commerce, even though no such substantial effect was visible to the naked eye.†Lopez, 514 U.S. at 563."
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