From the
Second Amendment Foundation's FaceBook page, this announcement:
Quote:
BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation today filed suit in U.S. District Court in Virginia challenging the constitutionality of federal and Virginia provisions barring handgun sales to non-residents.
SAF is joined in the lawsuit by Michelle Lane, a District of Columbia resident who cannot legally purchase handguns because there are no retail firearms dealers inside the District. The Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller ruling struck down the District’s handgun ban, confirming that individuals have a constitutional right to possess handguns.
SAF and Lane are represented by attorney Alan Gura of Gura & Possessky, PLLC, who won both the Heller ruling and last year’s Supreme Court victory in McDonald v. City of Chicago. Named as defendants are Attorney General Eric Holder and W. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police.
“This is an important issue in the era of the national instant background check,” said SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The NICS check should allow law-abiding citizens like Miss Lane to exercise their Second Amendment rights regardless their place of residence.”
“Americans don’t check their constitutional rights at the state line,” said Gura. “And since Michelle Lane is legally entitled to possess firearms, forcing her to seek a non-existing D.C. dealer to buy a handgun is pointless when perfectly legitimate options exist minutes across the Potomac River.”
“The Supreme Court has ruled that District residents have an individual right, protected by the Constitution, to have a handgun in their home,” Gottlieb noted. “The high court has also ruled that the Second Amendment applies to the states. Existing state and federal statutes violate both the spirit and letter of recent court rulings and the Constitution, and our lawsuit seeks to remedy that situation.”
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I've entered the data into the main 2A Cases thread and I'll be updating it when the Court docket becomes available on PACER.
As you may know, there is only a single FFL in D.C. He has lost his current lease and is currently looking for another place to do business. Mr. Sykes does not have a storefront, per se. What he does is to trafnser handguns from other FFL's into D.C. Since
Heller, Mr. Sykes has facilitated over 1000 transfers (at a cost of $125 per transfer).
Since he has lost his lease, he has stopped accepting new transfers. This essentially means that D.C. residents have no legal means to acquire handguns for self defense.
Building upon the remand in Dearth v. Holder, the SAF is attempting to invalidate that portion of the 1968 GCA that requires you to be a resident of the State wherein your handgun purchase/transfer is made.
If successful, this will mean that any U.S. citizen may purchase not only rifles and shotguns, but also handguns from anywhere else in the U.S., from any FFL.