BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation and its partners have filed an amicus brief with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a case involving a Florida postal worker who was indicted for possessing a firearm in a federal facility.
He was cleared by the federal district court, and now the government is appealing. SAF and its partners are encouraging the 11th Circuit Court to uphold the district court ruling. The case is known as U.S. v. Ayala.
Joining SAF are the California Rifle & Pistol Association, Minnesota Gun Owners’ Caucus and Second Amendment Law Center. They are represented by attorneys C.D. Michel and Konstadinos T. Moros at Michel & Associates in Long Beach, Calif.
“In our brief,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “we maintain the district court got it right, and we believe the ruling should be affirmed. The government has provided no evidence of a historical tradition of disarming federal employees, same as it has shown no tradition of prohibiting firearms from postal facilities. The district court said such disarmament is unconstitutional, and we believe the 11th Circuit should uphold their decision.”
“We contend that sensitive places are intended to be rare exceptions to the right to carry by private citizens,” added SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “As noted in our brief, when the government designates a location to be a ‘gun-free zone’ but doesn’t provide security, it essentially admits it doesn’t really consider the place to be sensitive, yet it removes the effective means of self-defense by law-abiding citizens. The government is just arbitrarily disarming citizens. The government is trying to have it both ways.”