Rosenblum: "The Constitution can wait"


I am having a little trouble keeping my blood pressure down as I read what's going on in the inevitable court battle over Oregon's new gun control law, Measure 114, which was passed by the voters on November 8. Not only are the sheriffs from the Greater Idaho portion of the state brazenly declaring they won't enforce it, but now we have the state attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, asking a federal judge, Karen Immergut, to "postpone" the permit requirement part of the law for a couple of months.

Now, wait just a doggone minute. The state constitution says that the initiative takes effect 30 days after passage. That's Thursday of this week. What business does a federal judge have in overruling the state constitution on a matter of state law?

The judge's only jurisdiction, as far as my eye can tell, is to decide whether the new law violates the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution or is preempted by a federal statute. Whether the sheriffs have a permit system up and running in time to accommodate Measure 114's requirements has nothing to do with those questions. What business does a federal judge have deciding what the consequences are of the counties' not having their act together in time to start processing permit applications? The federal government is not supposed to be micromanaging implementation of state statutes.

And for that matter, what business does the state AG have declaring, or recommending, or conceding, a later effective date for a law passed by the voters? She's supposed to be upholding and defending the state constitution, which is quite clear on the matter. Instead she's rewriting it for administrative convenience.

As for the sheriffs, they should have seen the passage of the ballot measure coming. It's been in the works for years, and its full text was well publicized all summer long. The law says you can't buy a gun without a permit, effective Thursday. No permit, no gun sale. It's pretty simple. If they're in such a hurry to get those guns out on the street, the locals should have been working on the permit system all summer. Until they get it up and running, let's stop selling guns. That ought to speed things up a bit.

If I were Judge Immergut, I'd tell Rosenblum politely, no, I'm not kicking this political football around with you. And if I were the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, I'd tell Judge Immergut she can't say yes.

Comments

  1. How is effectively banning the purchase of all guns in Oregon, even temporarily, not a violation of the 2a? Also, since when is a permit and fees needed to exercise a constitutional right? Pretty much every aspect of 114 is unconstitutional and destined to the scrap heap.

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  2. You are entitled to your opinion, however wrong.

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  3. Rosenblum's motivations are likely based on potential liability to the state from business loss should M114 be found unconstitutional. We'll find out more when the federal court decides whether to issue a preliminary injunction, which is based, in part, on the likelihood that the plaintiff's will succeed on the merits of their lawsuit. If you read Bruen (which was decided after the drafters of M114 did their thing), it's far from certain that M114 survives a constitutional challenge. As far as the local yokels are concerned, they each swore an oath to uphold the Constitution - if their counsel deems M114 to be unconstitutional, they're likely being advised not to enforce it. It's a brave new world out there post-Bruen. Not taking a position, just saying read the Supreme Court's decision - it doesn't give Congress or the states much wiggle room.

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    1. The state is not going to be liable for anyone's business losses over this. Don't be silly. And the Ninth Circuit will read the High Court’s extremist rulings as narrowly as possible. Measure 114 has a severability clause in it, and the whole thing is not unconstitutional. As for locals having their own ideas that state laws are unconstitutional, and citing their oath, that is not new. Remember the Mean Girls of Multnomah County and gay marriage? (They were all shown the door, BTW...)

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  4. Not trying to argue with you (it's your blog and I enjoy reading it) but just take a look at Bruen and what the Supremes did the following day in Duncan v. Bonta, a case where the Ninth reversed a district court and upheld California's large capacity magazine ban. After Bruen, the Supremes accepted cert in Duncan and immediately sent it back to the Ninth for further consideration in light of Bruen. The dissent in the Ninth's original decision set out the argument for 2A interpretation that the Supremes adopted in Bruen, and the Supremes left very little wiggle room in their decision. I agree that the Ninth will try and avoid the result (Washington also has a large capacity magazine ban that's on challenge in federal district court in Seattle), but there's not much wiggle room post Bruen for them to be creative.

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    1. The magazine business is only part of this. The permits are a completely different story. Which is why Judge Immergut has no business monkeying around with timetables for the permit part of the law. The state could get a permit system up in a couple of weeks if it wanted to. Making people wait a few weeks longer than they eventually will have to is not so clearly unconstitutional that injunctions on that subject should be issued at this stage.

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  5. I don’t see it as a permit process. I see it as a public listing of gun owners.

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    1. It is the boiling frog of banning all guns. Anybody who thinks not, is a fool. The citizens must be disarmed because when they start taking our property and rights people will finally wake up to the game, but alas too late and too weak.

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    2. I have been hearing Demos they are going to take our guns for years. Still have mine and don't have a problem with getting a permit for more if I want them.

      I always find it humorous when someone says they will use their guns to fight the US government. Baghdad Bob made similar claims. RIP

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