Court Opinion

ID: 9491394
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:13:02.508203+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:42.940150
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The City of Columbus has attempted to correct the incoherent provisions in its old gun control law that I said were unconstitutional in Springfield Armory, 29 F.3d 250 (6th Cir.1994). No longer does the ordinance simply and irrationally outlaw certain brand named guns; or any modifications thereof, leaving untouched the same type weapons with other brand names. Now the City has used generic definitions. That corrects the main problem I had with the earlier ordinance.
It is true, as the court says, that the new ordinance leaves a lot of questions concerning the scope of the ordinance up in the air. But the Ohio courts could correct most of those problems by imposing a scienter requirement and giving a narrow scope to the “accepts-a-detachable-magazine” provisions for example, by saying that such a magazine must be readily available for purchase. Neither do the grandfather provisions seem unfair to me. They are based on a gun owner’s reliance on prior law, a rational distinguishing characteristic.
My main objection to the panel’s decision is that I do not believe that the case is ripe for decision. We did not have the ripeness issue before us in Springfield Armory. There are some applications of the ordinance that could be unconstitutional, as the panel has noted, but that is true of many laws. I would wait until the statute is applied in an enforcement proceeding before making a judgment. In most of its applications, assuming a scienter requirement is imposed, the ordinance will be valid. The ordinance is therefore not invalid on its face, as was the earlier ordinance. It is clearly possible to narrow enforcement to assault weapons *540knowingly possessed. I would wait and see how the law is applied and not try to answer a host of hypothetical questions in a long opinion in a declaratory judgment case. I would wait for a real case. I believe the case law supports the proposition that we should not normally adjudicate void for vagueness claims in pre-enforcement, declaratory judgment actions when the statute is not invalid on its face but only in certain applications. That is what the Supreme Court seems to say in Village of Hoffman Estates v. Fliside, 455 U.S. 489, 494-95, 102 S.Ct. 1186, 71 L.Ed.2d 362 (1982), and what our court says in NRA v. Magaw, 132 F.3d 272, 293 (6th Cir.1997).