Richard
It is a minefield because you could be in one city and the law would be one thing. You could be in another city, the law could be another thing, and that imposes a tremendous burden on the Second Amendment.
Emily
Oh gosh, yes.
Richard
We are the armed attorneys. Today we're talking about a permit scheme that was, or permit requirement that was struck down. This is a big win. It's out of the state of Pennsylvania. We're going to be talking about what provisions of the Pennsylvania law were found unconstitutional, what things were uphill and why this is important for everybody, because I think this is instructive on what we can see around the United States. But before we begin, share your support for the Second Amendment by hitting that like button. And so this case is actually very fascinating, brought by the Firearms Policy Coalition and what's going on.
Emily
It is, and I'll say before we get started, I am sick again, so I'm sorry that I'm a little raspy. Anybody who has kids, we took my son to one of those like
Richard
Petri dishes.
Emily
Yeah. He went to his first indoor play place last weekend.
Richard
Mistakes were made.
Emily
Oh my God. Everything he could find. He was like, how does it feel on my teeth? And I was like, oh buddy. And so here we are. Everybody's sick, but hopefully we get through it and it doesn't bother y'all too much. So yes, we have this challenge by the Fires Policy Coalition in Pennsylvania to several parts of the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act. So in addition to Firearms Policy Coalition, there are some individual plaintiffs. And interestingly, all individual plaintiffs who had at one time been convicted of felony offenses who have since had their civil rights restored. And so we've challenged several parts of this law, including the ability for those individuals specifically to obtain licenses in the state of Pennsylvania, the requirement that you get a license in order to concealed carry or open carry in your vehicle. And oh, we also have a challenge to the carry in Philadelphia law. You can't carry specifically without a license either openly or concealed.
Richard
I hate it when states don't have preemption. Yes,
Emily
Me too. It's awful. And I think finally the final challenge here, there were many, many challenges and it all went different ways for us. We've got a challenge to this Pennsylvania law that when there is a declared state of emergency, they can suspend some of your gun rights. And so we have a declared state of emergency back in 2018. It has expired now, but it expired after the filing of this lawsuit. Basically starting with the opioid epidemic and then continuing through COVID-19. That's all such an emergency. You can't have gun
Richard
Rights. That always grinds my gears because we see a lot of suspension of, we don't get our rights from the government, but we see the government infringing on rights whenever we have these declared emergencies. Well, guess what? During the founding of the country, we were in a state of emergency and I think our founders contemplated like, Hey, you don't just lose this stuff because some bureaucrat signed a document. So it really makes me mad when we see the Abridgment of rights because of an emergency.
Emily
Sure. Well you think the Revolutionary War wasn't just like super chill.
Richard
They're like, oh yeah, this is all good until an emergency happens and it goes all out the window. Right? Yep. All right, let's sign off on that. Sure enough. Not a thing. Not a thing. Alright, so we have the substance of the complaint. This is drafted by the folks of Firearms Policy Coalition. They did a fantastic job. They've done
Emily
Such good work recently.
Richard
So I would say the two big provisions that were looking at for our purposes, there's kind of five different attacks they had. The two big ones were carrying in the vehicle open, carrying the vehicle, and then this carrying during the declared emergency. And so we see the court briefing on this. We look at, hey, are these facially unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, New York State Rifle Pistol Association v Bruin? And we see, hey, guess what? The court upholds. These are facially unconstitutional. They grant summary judgment in favor of firearms policy Coalition, these plaintiffs with respect to those two particular provisions. Now the court doesn't give them everything that they want. There were five challenges they gave them to, they held back three. And yeah, the state or the city of Philadelphia is one that they did not address.
Emily
I mean, essentially it's not pled in the right location and it's not pled properly. So they've got time to refile to get that done, essentially. I mean, you have to present the controversy correctly to the court system. So what they're going to have to do is come back and say, we intend to carry in Philadelphia. There is an imminent harm. We have standing, we're pleading imminent harm and we're filing it in the Eastern District. We're filing it in the locale in which there is an issue. So that all makes sense to me. And the two winners we have really is they are highly consistent with other opinions that we've gotten recently telling people you can't have a firearm in your car without getting licensed is highly restrictive on the Second Amendment.
Richard
Extremely. And we threw up the case earlier, but for those listening along, this is Su Suarez v ic. This is 1 21 CV oh seven one oh. If you wanted to go follow along and check out the kind of filings in that case and follow along the opinion if you wanted to research it further. But this statutory preemption, I got to go back to that for a moment. Oh yeah. Because what we see in gun hostile states, and this is something that I think Second Amendment advocates need to be aware of. This is an issue that needs to be on your radar if it's not on your radar, is the issue of statutory preemption. And that's when, if we have statutory preemption, that's when the state legislature takes the authority away from municipalities, cities, or counties. They say, Hey, we're going to regulate everything on the state level. And what that ensures is that state laws are uniform throughout the state. So that way I know if I'm in the state of Pennsylvania, it doesn't matter what city I'm in. I know the law at the time, wherever I am. And these states that do not have statutory preemption, it is a minefield because you could be in one city and the law would be one thing. You could be in another city, the law could be another thing. And that imposes a tremendous burden on the Second Amendment.
Emily
Oh gosh, yes. So we've got our two issues here where we won guns, won open carry and vehicles without a license and being able to not have your rights restricted during these constant states of disaster. We've got our issue, which is unfortunately there is no preemption. So we've got our very specific to Philadelphia issue, which is just push to the side. Go figure that one out you guys. And then we've got our two loser issues,
Richard
Right? Yeah. The uphill, the requirement that you need a license to carry concealed in the state that was upheld. And then our third issue was if you had previously had suffered a disability that would prevent you from getting a license to carry in this state, having been previously convicted of a felony. Well, these folks went the extra mile, got their rights restored, they said, they upheld that restriction saying, Hey, guess what? This restriction is allowed to stand. So we have those three issues. Philadelphia still needed a concealed carry. People who have had their rights restored, we can still prevent them from getting a
Emily
License. So I mean, I think the reasoning here, it is kind of similar to things that we've seen throughout the country. I don't agree with it, but this is the reasoning is that basically if you are still giving the avenue to someone, then you're okay, you probably didn't violate Bruin, so you have to have a license to conceal carry, but you can still open carry without a license and it's a shall issue permitting scheme. So court concludes we're all okay there not violative of Bruin. And this issue of can you deny people who have had these previous convictions? Well, it's still a shall issue scheme, not a may issue scheme. Essentially they're saying sure, they've got gun rights in other places. It's just the denial of a license. States are still fully allowed to put their own hoops in place to jump through and make you jump through those hoops in order to qualify for that license. Again, not saying we agree with that, but it is consistent with rulings that we are seeing post Bruin throughout the country. It's not particularly surprising.
Richard
No. And another kind of case, just to illustrate the point, we see this with the made in Texas suppressor challenge. We've seen the courts say, Hey, guess what? You're not prohibited from getting a suppressor. You just have to jump through the hoops of the National Firearms Act, pay the tax, submit your application, get approved. And so there's an avenue here. So we're falling into this kind of intermediate land where, alright, when some conduct is prohibited, you can't possess a firearm or you can't carry a firearm or you can't have this type of firearm. Well, those are really clear restrictions that are black and white. When you have these kind of intermediate, well, there's a way around it. You just got to jump through the hoops. I call hoops infringements.
Emily
Yeah, it is. It's a little bit disheartening because take yourself back to May of 2022 or June, may, and we all read the Bruin decision and we were like, there are no more gun laws. Which was, I mean, it was an exciting time to be alive. And we see that the courts are applying Bruin in such a way, in a more moderate way, I think than initially we were all hoping for
Richard
More than I was hoping.
Emily
So what does this mean for all of us going forward? I think that this case, if you really dig into it, and hopefully you were, I know it's a lot of legal issues here that we talked about, but this is highly instructive for what is going to happen in challenges all across the country. I think that courts are going to look and say, is it a total restriction? Because there's not a lot of text history and tradition for that. But if we have these sort of, you still have an avenue, there's some partial restrictions, they're going to find a bru and justification for it
Richard
And it's a damn shame. It
Emily
Is a damn shame. But here we are.
Richard
But we hope you enjoy this discussion. If you did, consider subscribing, hitting that like button and help us fight the anti two A algorithm by sharing this video.
Emily
And please comment for us below. Do you think that Bruin is being faithfully applied? Do you agree with what the courts are doing? Until next time, we're the armed attorneys.
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Credit: (Author, Speaker), Armed Attorneys