CCRKBA: FIFTH CIRCUIT RULING ON INTERSTATE HANDGUN SALES PROPER
BELLEVUE, WA – A ruling by a three-judge panel of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which holds the ban on direct interstate handgun sales to private citizens is unconstitutional is being hailed by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
“Especially now, with the existence of the National Instant Check System (NICS), this antiquated piece of government overreach has certainly outlived whatever usefulness its authors imagined,” said CCRKBA Executive Director Andrew Gottlieb. “It was an excessive idea to begin with, and now, almost sixty years after being adopted as part of the 1968 Gun Control Act, it is long past the time when this restriction should have been erased. If it is unconstitutional now, it always has been.”
Historically, Americans could travel from one place to another, across invisible state and territorial boundaries, and purchase firearms, including handguns. If a person can legally purchase a handgun in his or her home state, that individual should be able to legally purchase the same handgun in a neighboring state, or ten states away.
“This ban on interstate handgun sales should have been repealed as part of the federal statute which created the NICS system,” Gottlieb observed. “If a person can pass a background check in Arizona, for example, that same individual can pass the same background check just across the border in New Mexico. The same background check is done whether you are standing in a gun shop in Idaho or Indiana.
“Back in 1968,” he continued, “we didn’t have the NICS system, which can tell almost immediately if someone is disqualified. The technology now exists which makes perpetuating this interstate sales ban an unnecessary anachronism. The existence of this ban can no longer be justified, especially in the wake of this Fifth Circuit Court ruling.
“We’re watching this case closely,” Gottlieb said, “and we are hopeful the ruling will be upheld if, and when, it is appealed. It makes no sense to retain this restriction, now that an appeals court panel has declared it to be in violation of the Second Amendment.”
