by Dave Workman | Senior Editor
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) has stepped into the legal arena, filing a federal lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder challenging the current federal law prohibiting cross-state handgun purchases.
CCRKBA is getting financial support from the Second Amendment Foundation, its sister organization.
Also named in the lawsuit is B. Todd Jones, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has recommended on its editorial page that ATF should be dissolved. Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner has announced plans to file a bill that seeks to do just that (See related story elsewhere in this issue).
The lawsuit is a rare move for CCRKBA, acknowledged Chairman Alan Gottlieb. Typically, CCRKBA confines its activities to supporting grassroots activism, allowing local and state organizations to take the lead.
Currently, CCRKBA is spearheading an effort in Washington State to pass Initiative 591, the single-page gunowner privacy measure that prevents government gun confiscation without due process. It also mandates that any background checks conducted in Washington must comply with a uniform national standard.
Joining CCRKBA as plaintiffs against Holder and Jones are Texas resident and firearms retailer Fredric Russell Mance, Jr.; Tracey Ambeau Hanson and Andrew Hanson, both of Washington, DC. The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth division.
“It is overreaching, if not downright silly, in today’s environment with the federal instant background check system to perpetuate a prohibition on interstate handgun purchases that has outlived its usefulness,” Gottlieb explained. “If a law- abiding citizen can clear a background check and legally purchase a handgun in his own state, he would pass the same background check just across the border in another state.” Currently, a person can only buy a handgun from another state if the gun is shipped from one dealer to another, and the final paperwork is done in the buyer’s home state, where the background check is performed.
As a firearms retailer in Texas, Mance would sell handguns directly to consumers in other states, the lawsuit notes, but under current law, he is prohibited from doing so. The Hansons are fully qualified under federal law, and laws in Texas and the District of Columbia, to purchase and possess handguns.
For many years, handgun purchases have been treated differently than rifle and shotgun sales.
“Federal law allows for interstate long gun sales,” he noted, “as long as the dealer follows the law, so what’s the logic of the federal government banning interstate handgun sales? Some states allow for, or even welcome, interstate handgun sales, so what’s the federal government doing?”
