12500 N.E. Tenth Place • Bellevue, WA 98005 • JPFO.org • 800-869-1884 • info@jpfo.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
Feb. 13, 2017
JPFO Breaks New Legal Ground
Amicus brief confirms the private right to sell firearms
Teixeira case at 9th Circuit compares gun stores to book stores
The right to bear arms includes the right to buy arms
Alameda zoning scheme attempts to block good gun store
San Francisco, Calif. -- The noted civil-rights group Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, jpfo.org, has filed an amicus brief supporting a gun-store owner who has been blocked in California from opening an important new shop.
To get started, the new owners, three partners, navigated a bewildering maze of red tape and an Alameda County zoning ordinance that required their gun store to be 500 feet from certain other properties. Then the County changed the way it measures distances, after the owners started up. Door to door footage had suddenly become from wall to property line. Other obstacles sprang up—that were insurmountable—eliminating any place to put the new facility. Their perfectly legal business and constitutionally protected property were redlined.
The 9th Circuit Court, in a lengthy three-judge-panel ruling properly overturned the lower district court. "The Court recognized that taking away the means of exercising a fundamental right takes away the right itself," said Rabbi Dovid Bendory, the group's Rabbinic Director, commenting on the decision, "but now the full 9th Circuit is going to review the case, and that could spell trouble for those who support the rights protected by the Second Amendment." The County petitioned and was granted a full en banc review, in an effort to overturn the three-judge panel's pro-civil-rights decision.
12500 N.E. Tenth Place • Bellevue, WA 98005 • JPFO.org • 800-869-1884 • info@jpfo.org
JPFO's brief presents important new historical information in a compelling, fast-moving way, that has never appeared in any Second Amendment brief. This includes the arms commerce rights expressly guaranteed in the 1606 Virginia Charter and the 1620 New England Charter. The brief describes British attempts to prohibit arms commerce in Colonial times from 1774-83 in great detail, all of it thoroughly documented.
"The JPFO brief makes it clear that commercial activity in firearms and gunpowder was routinely practiced in the Colonies, right down to foreign trade," added Alan Korwin, a gun-law expert and consultant to JPFO. "The British Crown's attempt to ban this activity by law and by force aroused the Colonists and was a key factor in precipitating the American Revolution," he notes.
JPFO supports the historical record and current liberty to buy and sell guns as a routine part of American life.
Copies of JPFO's amicus brief and the Teixeira panel decision are available on the JPFO website, jpfo.org. The amicus brief was written for JPFO by David B. Kopel and Joseph G.S. Greenlee.
JPFO's main mission has always included education,
shining light where some let fear paralyze their sensibilities,
speaking truth to power, and ensuring Never Again
is not just a catch phrase.
JPFO.org
