Supreme Court Brief (Garland v. VanDerStok)
August 14, 2024
Brief of Respondents
Yesterday DD filed its Brief of Respondents in Garland v. VanDerStok, which will be argued before the Court on October 8th.
The filed version is also at the Court’s website here.
Next: Reply & Oral Argument
Our side’s amici will roll in over the next week, and I expect some good ones, but we will, as usual, be outnumbered by Giffords, Everytown and the blue state coalition. ATF files their reply after that.
As mentioned, oral argument is set for October 8th. Cooper & Kirk won the coin toss to do the argument for our side, but we will still assist.
The most important arguments are about how the Rule flatly contradicts the GCA. We advocate for the most natural and concise construction of the statute, making a nice contrast to the pages and time it takes ATF to explain how natural and ordinary their construction of the statute is.
Not that we expect the Court to get to it, but we ultimately make a unique Second Amendment avoidance argument. By now everyone has seen Greenlee’s article, so we add John Dillin’s The Kentucky Rifle to the record as a secondary source on the history of making arms from unfinished components. OG Legio members will note we first cited Dillin on the history of making in 2022’s Defense Distributed v. Bonta in California.
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Counsel, are you saying making guns from readily convertible components is the country’s very oldest tradition?
Mr. Chief Justice, I am saying the hunters and woodcutters who slept in their boots by the dying light of their thousand fires and went on, who, eyes incandesced by their massive rapacity, wave on wave of the violent and the insane, mindless and pale with a longing that nothing save dark’s total restitution could appease, made their guns before they could make human speech.
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