So held Elite Precision Customs L.L.C. v. BATFE, decided today by Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, joined by Kurt Engelhardt; a very short excerpt of the reasoning, but you can see the opinion for a lot more:
It is no defense of the Ban's constitutionality to theorize that it is only a minor infringement of Second Amendment rights that still "allow[s] ample access to handguns by those who are permitted to possess and purchase them under state and local laws." Mance v. Sessions (5th Cir. 2018) (rejecting a pre-Bruen challenge to the Ban)….
Even to the extent that the Ban can be circumvented by the licensee-to-licensee transfer workaround (which vests full veto power over interstate handgun sales in a group of third parties financially dependent on the government's licensing regime), the Ban invariably calls for the payment of a fee over and above the cost of a handgun. We must pause before endorsing a cost attached to the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right. To the extent that prior decisions from this court hint there is an acceptable cost that may be imposed on the basic exercise of Second Amendment rights, they are abrogated by Bruen and its progeny.
Judge Catharina Haynes dissented, stating she agreed with the district court's decision upholding the law.
David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson, and William V. Bergstrom (Cooper & Kirk, PLLC) and Cody J. Wisniewski (FPC Action Foundation) represent plaintiffs. Note that the Firearms Policy Coalition has in the past retained me to file some amicus briefs on their behalf, but I was not at all involved in this particular case.
The post Restriction on Handgun Sales to Out-of-State Residents Violates Second Amendment appeared first on Reason Magazine.
