On June 6, 2024, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty filed a lawsuit against Steven Little in his official capacity as Acting Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), demanding the Court temporarily and permanently enjoin enforcement of Wis. Admin. Code § NR 20.05(2).
Wis. Admin. Code § NR 20.05(2): “No person may…[p]ossess or control any firearm, gun or similar device at any time while on the waters, banks or shores that might be used for the purpose of fishing.”
The DNR regulation bans possession of firearms in a wide variety of locations and activities. It directly violates the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. Virtually any firearm “might be used for the purpose of fishing.” The lawsuit does not claim a violation of Wisconsin Section 25, although the regulation also appears to violate Section 25.
The people have the right to keep and bear arms for security, defense, hunting, recreation, or any other lawful purpose. (Art. 1, § 25)
A far-left Wisconsin Supreme Court essentially nullified Section 25 in State v Hamden in 2003. Because of the 2022 election, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is currently back under the control of far-left judges. This may explain the strategy of citing the U.S. Second Amendment but not Section 25 of the Wisconsin Constitution.
The DNR regulation was created in 1999 during a rewrite of the regulations. It was claimed that the rewrite contained only “minor substantial changes.” The ban on firearms in wide areas of the state was administratively created within a year of the passage of the Constitutional amendment, Section 25, which was passed in 1998.
In the history of fishing in Wisconsin, it was common to keep a “kit gun” in a tackle box as a means of subduing large fish as they were played out and brought close to the angler on a boat. My father often kept a Remington Rolling Block single-shot .22 pistol for such a purpose. I possess that pistol today. In 1965, a campaign was started to demonize using pistols to dispatch large fish, particularly muskies, in Wisconsin. In 1966, the Wisconsin Conservation Commission created a rule to make using a firearm to shoot fish illegal. In 1999, the change was made, as shown in the second paragraph. It was an enormously substantive change.
Instead of prohibiting the shooting of fish, the rule prohibited the possession of all firearms at any time over vast areas of Wisconsin. Many people have unknowingly violated the rule thousands of times over the intervening decades. A person cannot travel by boat or canoe, hunt along a river or lake, hike on a lake shoreline or river bank, or cross a bridge over water while possessing a firearm without violating the rule. The applicability of the Bruen decision by the Supreme Court of the United States is clear. There is no historical precedent before 1999.
The defendant in the lawsuit, Acting Secretary Steven Little, has not yet responded to the summons filed in Sheboygan County Circuit Court. The defendant has 45 days to respond.
This case should be a clear and easy win. The flipping of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the election of 2022 (millions of dollars were spent by ardent leftist to accomplish this), makes the outcome of the case less certain, at least at the Wisconsin Supreme Court level. While the Court was controlled by conservative judges, prosecutors were careful not to bring up cases involving Section 25. Given the gutting of Section 25 by a previous leftist-dominated court, current leftist judges might claim the plaintiff has no standing because he has not been arrested or fined.
Wisconsin’s precedent holds that a regulation must be challenged under a separate part of the law. The lawsuit uses this to show the current plaintiff has standing.
If this case goes to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and the Wisconsin Court holds against the plaintiff, it could be appealed to the United States Supreme Court. This was the route taken in Caetano v Massachusetts. Only a few cases which appeal to the US Supreme Court are heard each year. If appealed to the US Supreme Court, victory would be in serious doubt until the Court agreed to hear the case.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
from https://ift.tt/IfKhCen
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment