MN: AG asks for En Banc Review in Carry Permit Case

Image of Keith Ellison, Minnesota AG,  from AFGE stop Fast Track rally in DC, 2015 

The Attorney General of the State of Minnesota, has filed a petition in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, asking for an en banc review of the three judge panel’s opinion which struck down the Minnesota statute banning the carry of firearms in public by people over the age of 18 and less than the age of 21.

On July 16, 2024, a unanimous three judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, confirmed the District Judge, Katherine M. Menendez, was correct when she struck down Minnesota’s law banning people over the age of 18 and under the age of 21 from obtaining a Minnesota carry permit. The three judge panel affirmed such people were part of the “people” mentioned in the Second Amendment. They affirmed the State did not meet its burden of showing a historical analogy of sufficient magnitude exists where an age restriction such as Minnesota’s ban on the exercise of rights protected by the Second Amendment, was part of the tradition and historical record at the time the Second Amendment was ratified. 

This was a strong and carefully worded opinion written by Judge Benton. The Attorney General of Minnesota could either accept the decision, ask for an en banc review by the entire Eighth Circuit, or appeal to the Supreme Court. The AG chose to ask for an en banc review.  From the Petition:

The common sense gun regulation at issue here is limited and temporary. Minnesota allows significant access to guns by young people. Minnesota does not restrict the possession or use of firearms by youths of any age when supervised by parents or guardians. Minn. Stat. § 624.713, subd. 1(1); Minn. Stat. § 97B.021. By age 14, teenagers may possess guns on their property or when hunting without parental supervision if they obtain a firearms safety certificate. Minn. Stat. § 97B.021. And by age 18, young people may possess a pistol or semiautomatic assault weapon in those same situations. Id.; Minn. Stat. § 624.713, subd. 1(1).

Mark Smith, in a well done youtube video explains that he believes the purpose of the petition is to delay the restoration of rights protected by the Second Amendment. 

Link to the youtube video.

In an article published on AmmoLand, this correspondent wrote that a petition for an en banc review would be unlikely to succeed. Mark Smith agrees. Give a minimal chance of success to obtain an en banc review, Mark believes the purpose is one of delay, as have been many of the court challenges of opinions upholding the rights protected by the Second Amendment in the Heller, McDonald, Caetano, and Bruen decisions. If the circuits which are defying the Supreme Court can delay long enough, they hope a Harris or future Democratic president or administration will be able to change the Supreme Court back to judges sympathetic to the Progressive ideology. Such judges would reverse the last 15 years of Second Amendment jurisprudence and write the Second Amendment into a legal non-entity, as they did from 1939 to 2008. 

Justice delayed is justice denied. Delay justice long enough, and it may result in the destruction of all restraints imposed on the government by the Constitution. Progressives hate restraints on governmental power, as a foundational part of their ideology. President Woodrow Wilson stated the concept when writing as a Progressive ideologist in 1887:

The germinal conceptions of democracy are as free from all thought of a limitation of the public authority as are the corresponding conceptions of socialism; the individual rights which the democracy of our own century has actually observed, were suggested to it by a political Philosophy radically individualistic, but not necessarily democratic. Democracy is bound by no principle of its own nature to say itself nay as to the exercise of any power.

Thus Woodrow Wilson dismissed the Bill of Rights and all limitations on government power inherent in the structure of the Constitution. Woodrow Wilson was one of the founders of the Progressive ideology. The Democratic Party of today has fully embraced Progressive ideology in this regard. 

©2024 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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