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Supreme Court rules AGAINST straw purchasers of guns.

fairsheet

Senator
This is why I was alright with Heller v. DC. It answered the most fundamental question of all and took it off the table. Ever since, we've been free to consider all ancillary questions rationally.
 

Constitutional Sheepdog

][][][%er!!!!!!!
This is why I was alright with Heller v. DC. It answered the most fundamental question of all and took it off the table. Ever since, we've been free to consider all ancillary questions rationally.
You needed the government to tell you that you had the right to keep and bear arms? Interesting. However straw purchases have been illegal for quite sometime
 

Abatis

Council Member
This is why I was alright with Heller v. DC. It answered the most fundamental question of all and took it off the table. Ever since, we've been free to consider all ancillary questions rationally.
How exactly did Heller inform / influence the Abramski decision?

Abramski had nothing to do with "gun rights"; all it did was endorse the notion that government agencies are free to invent, alter and even reverse prohibitory regulatory / interpretive rule impositions that are unsupported expressly in statute.

The "crime" that Abramski was convicted of was not a crime before 1994. In 1994 ATF's reversed the interpretive rule for question 11(a); under the old rule the sale to a secondary eligible person would have been perfectly acceptable. During oral argument it was noted that the law has not been altered on this point and the actual statute strangely allows both interpretations . . . Justice Ginsburg questioning Joseph Palmore, Assistant to the Solicitor General:



JUSTICE GINSBURG: Mr. Palmore, when the Agency changed its view in 1994, there was no change in the statutory text, was there?

MR. PALMORE: There was not, Justice Ginsburg.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: And at that time, the interpretation was that you committed the offense if you sold --if the person, the true buyer, was an unlawful --a person to whom firearms could not be sold. But if you --if the ultimate possessor was a lawful possessor, then there was no liability.

So the --the statute has to be open, at least, to either interpretation, no change in the words. The Agency read it one way, and then later changed its mind and read it the other way.

MR. PALMORE: That's right, Justice Ginsburg.

Oral Argument, pgs 34-35 (263KB pdf)
Abramski v US
January 22, 2014

I see this decision as a dangerous step, allowing the government wide latitude in statutory interpretation. This allows government to create without any legal justification, simply through inventive rule impositions, criminal liabilities where no such liability is expressly stated in law. I see Abramski as opening the door to limitless executive powers to regulate, restrict and as we see here, criminalize citizen behavior ignored by the legislature.
 
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