Just wanted to be specific to the question, but true enough that they’d be complaining, right or wrong —and I too would want to see what prior exceptions to the general rule (if the state acts under a presumed-valid-at-the-time legal authority, but turned out to be wrong, you still cannot claim losses) may have looked like.
By this logic, the police should never help someone who had something small stolen from them as long as there are cold-case murders still unsolved. I don’t think a “no low-hanging fruit until the high-hanging fruit are plucked first” approach applies here.
I understand conceptually that there’s a difference in legal rigor between an executive order and something passing both chambers of congress and signed by the president. It just doesn’t seem material to the discussion.
But I don’t think that gay people should be financially made whole for DOMA. And I like gay people. You say discredited, I say consistent.
DOMA was a 14th Amendment issue not a 5th Amendment issue. Moreover it didn’t deprive anyone of any pre-existing rights, or arrogate the government any powers that it didn’t already have. It’s not even close to the same thing.
Never mind
But they should have been reimbursed when the law went into effect. Not after it was overturned.
This.
Yes. I care more about children being made effectively orphans than i do about adults who lose a $200 piece of hardware. I guess I’m weird that way.
I’ve worked for a company that paid tend of thousands to comply with a regulation that was ultimately overturned. And i was on a grand jury that issued indictments against police officers who illegally used civil forfeiture to steal a guy’s car.
The poor poor bastards who destroyed their bump stock just don’t elicit my sympathy. Sorry.
If you want to keep them happy as customers, agree that the situation sucks, and suggest they write their congressional rep.
You said:
I was pointing out that the little three letter word you tossed in after telling us we’re just bigoted against gun owners, is rather important. It isn’t a little throw away comment.
It is the difference between someone losing a $200 inanimate object and someone losing their child. THAT is why I don’t think these “victims” deserve reparations while millions of other people deeply wronged by our government over decades and centuries get nothing.
But hey, if complaints by these people lead to civil forfeiture being thrown out, it will be well worth it. Yeah, i know, that’s a pipe dream.
Congress had nothing to do with this. It was then President trump. You know, the guy that the NRA endorses? Who banned more guns than Biden and Obama together?
How much is a bump stock anyway?
BTW- The purpose of the bump stock was a end run around the law prohibiting machine guns. So, altho I have no disagreement with the SCOTUS dec, people who bought them knew that, and so - sorry, no refund in this case. (SCOTUS was right- Congress should have made the law, not trump)
Congress could have made Bump stocks illegal. = the court’s conservative justices emphasized that Congress could have enacted a law that banned all weapons capable of high rates of fire, but it did not – and so the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives was wrong to interpret the federal ban on machine guns to extend to bump stocks.
Supreme Court strikes down bump stock ban - SCOTUSblog.
And I hope Congress does make it a law. I know I am thought of here as a “gun nut” but I am not- I am a solid supporter of the Bill of Rights- and yes, the 2nd does protect the Right to own a gun. But just like the 1st Ad- there are limits to that right. And full auto weapons are one such a limit.
Then the answer is simple- They should ask Trump directly for compensation.
The line is very very long.
I am sure he will treat these new creditors no worse then any of his other creditors.
They should get reimbursed exactly like people were reimbursed for confiscated booze during Prohibition.
Though in that case there was an explicit validly approved constitutional provision and a validly approved law under that constitutional provision that were recognized as valid until repeal – and when repeal was legislated, the prior legislation and the actions under it were not annulled – yes, there again, the norm was applied: there is in our legal tradition no entitlement to be restored for such losses except by explicit legislation.
I suppose, if you argued and a court ruled that a regulation-caused loss constituted an uncompensated “taking for public purposes”, you could seek a claim for the value of the loss. I don’t believe that was argued in the OP reference case.
Going back to the OP, as puzzlegal mentioned, his best response to customers is “as the law stands, no, that was not what was decided… yeah, that bites but it’s your Congressman you should write to change it”.
The model we sold retailed for $269.
That of course is courteous and rational, but for anybody actually obsessing over the loss of a useless piece of gadgetry “Get a life” is more to the point.
That was a Constitutional amendment, not an executive order. Big difference. Just like slave owners were not compensated.
Their recourse would have been to file and win a lawsuit challenging the ban when it first came into effect, i.e. a declaratory judgement.
Think about it this way. A person who was convicted for a felony due to circumstances ruled unconstitutional in later cases is not entitled to have his conviction set aside. For example many people convicted before the 1966 Miranda case did not recieve the namesake Miranda warning, and if their case came up today, they would be acquitted. However, they did not have their conviction set aside in 1966. Some people whose cases were pending when Miranda was handed down had their cases dismissed, but they were not entitled to any form of compensation.
Let me roleplay here…
“Your honor, my client willfully destroyed his own property. We humbly request the court remedy this injury by ordering the government to pay damages.”
Hmm. That won’t work. Phrased this way, the injury looks self-inflicted. Why should the government be responsible?
“Your honor, my client willfully destroyed his own property due to a mistake of law. We humbly request the court remedy this injury by ordering the government to pay damages.”
But the government is not generally responsible for the plaintiff’s own mistake of law.
“Your honor, my client willfully destroyed his own property due to good faith reliance on the government’s regulations, which constituted a mistake of law (the regulation was subsequently deemed unconstitutional). We humbly request the court remedy this injury by ordering the government to pay damages.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. Note well, the mistake of law is still committed by the plaintiff in this theory. If this were a criminal case and the client had foregone a particular defense, due to some law since ruled unconstitutional, there may be a chance of having the case sent back for re-trial… iff doing so could result in an acquittal.
But the client here is asking for monetary damages in the civil, not criminal context. Because the relief being sought is legal (monetary damages) we would apply legal rather than equitable principles.
One principle is the doctrine of laches. That lawsuit has been pending for a long time, and if a bump stock enthusiast such as plaintiff probably knew about it and hoped the ban would be ruled unconstitutional. All this time he could have brought suit for damages and asked the judge to put the case on hold pending the outcome of the existing constitutional case. In other words he can’t come to court saying I just now found out about my mistake of law. The doctrine of laches comes into play because the government can argue the plaintiff unreasonably delayed the suit for damages, and the delay makes it harder for the govt to counter claims of injury. I.e. the government will have a harder time pinning down the value of a piece of plastic it has never seen, which plaintiff destroyed two plus years ago. The more time that passes between a receipt or picture being printed/taken and its production in discovery, the more difficult it is for the government to verify its accuracy and authenticity. That sort of thing.
Another more relevant principle of law is that the United States is a sovereign entity and cannot be sued in its own courts without its consent. In practice this means Congress has to pass a special law allowing claims against the government for reparations, see for example Japanese internment in the '40s, culminating in special acts of Congress in 1948 (not effective) and 1988 (more effective). I am not aware of such a law for ex-bump stock owners.
There are theories under which you can sue an individual government employee for enforcing an unconstitutional law, but none of those theories apply to the present situation. First, most of those theories are limited to equity (i.e. injunctions), not damages. 42 U.S.C. § 1983 only applies to purported acts of state/territorial/D.C. government, not the federal government. There may be an implied cause of action for certain violations of the federal constitution, but we are not alleging any violation of the constitution in this suit. It is possible to strip immunity from a particular government actor, but the act would have to be so blatantly unconstitutional that it could not reasonably be construed as an act of government. Even if we could convincingly argue that the bump stock regulation was blatantly unconstitutional (it wasn’t), no government actor actually enforced the law to the client’s injury. Rather, the client destroyed his own property.
Essentially, there’s nobody to sue.
~Max
I’m aware of the differences, I was just trying to state that I think they should get nothing with a little flair.
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People who briefly were stopped from cobbling together their own machine guns.