More on the Parker v DC case (Second Amendment)

Gura and Possessky, The law firm for the successful appellants in the DC gun ban case posted all of the public documents pertaining to this case. They posted some background. This is a gold mine of information that all legal begals and 2nd Amendment advocates should read. All the legal briefs, letters, and decisions at both the District and Appellate level involved in this case are posted online at Gura and Possessky's web site.

My opinion of the NRA dropped dramaticly. Why? Well, I'll let Alan Gura explain one with the overview of the litigation.

(snip)
Before the court could rule in our case, the National Rifle Association sponsored a copycat lawsuit entitled Seegars v. Ashcroft (subsequently Gonzales), and immediately sought to have their lawsuit joined with ours. The NRA had tried to dissuade the filing of Parker. Having failed in that effort, they lobbied unsuccessfully to alter our litigation strategy. Seegars was designed to raise issues we had rejected in our case, in an attempt to have the courts avoid interpretation of the Second Amendment. Seegars counsel was an attorney who had been involved in the early stages of our case, but who was not retained to proceed with us much further.

It was not a coincidence that the NRA had failed to defend the Second Amendment rights of Washington, D.C. residents in court for over twenty-five years, but suddenly sponsored a copycat action immediately upon our having filed suit. We successfully defeated the NRA’s attempt to use Seegars as a vehicle to muscle in on our litigation. The District Court agreed with us that the behavior of Seegars counsel raised substantial ethical and attorney-client issues that would delay and complicate the litigation. Unfortunately, he was not disqualified from continuing to work on the Seegars matter as we had requested, and each case proceeded independently, on separate tracks before separate judges.

Meanwhile, the court excused the defendants in our case from compliance with their deadlines, allowing them generous extensions of time to file their pleadings, and allowed participation by various amici.

The NRA’s tactics in Seegars triggered the defendants in that case to raise substantial standing issues which were not raised by the defendants in our case, or their amici. Consequently, at oral argument in Parker, in October, 2003, the court asked the parties to submit additional briefing on the question of standing. However, during the course of the argument, the defendants’ attorney vowed that our clients would be prosecuted if they were to break the law.
(snip)

The NRA's attorneys need to take a procedure course.

Congratulations to the Gura and Possessky firm on their excellent victory, and good luck to them in any future appeals of this case if it goes that far.