OLYMPIA – Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson has joined 15 colleagues in an amicus brief to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, asking for a reversal of a district court’s decision to block enforcement of New York’s so-called Concealed Carry Improvement Act.
Ferguson joined attorneys general from the District of Columbia, Illinois, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The coalition argues that the CCIA’s provisions—which include new concealed-carry license requirements and restrictions on carrying firearms in certain sensitive places such as schools, public parks, and airports—are constitutional. The coalition further argues that licensing requirements offer a common-sense way to ensure that guns are not carried by individuals who demonstrably lack the character or temperament necessary to be entrusted with a deadly weapon.
“Bob Ferguson has never met a gun control scheme he didn’t like, and he has been advocating for restrictions on the rights of Evergreen State residents for years,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “It is hardly surprising to see his name on the list of Democrat attorneys general supporting language in an amicus brief that is simply mind-numbing in its contempt for the right to keep and bear arms.”
The attorneys general declare in their brief, “The challenged provisions of New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act (‘CCIA’) fit squarely within a long tradition of constitutionally acceptable regulations designed to meet states’ responsibility to protect their residents.”
“Just like the unconstitutional statute it replaced,” Gottlieb observed, “the CCIA is written to prevent law-abiding citizens from exercising their rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment to bear arms for their personal protection.”