The result in Roberts v. Bondi, No. 8:18-cv-1062 (Aug. 21, 2018) should not be terribly surprising, we suppose. After all, the plaintiff was asking the U.S. District Court to -- among other things -- conclude that a Florida statute banning a device which makes a semi-automatic rifle "somewhat mimic" fully-automatic fire, violated the plaintiff's constitutional rights. [Note: you can do this with just about any semi-auto rifle even without the special stock, although it can be somewhat awkward.]
In these type of cases, courts are hard-pressed to do much but uphold the ban, even if the thing being banned was, as they say, "perfectly legal" prior to the prohibition. That the courts do so may or may not sit well with you (mostly depending upon your view of the Second Amendment) but it is, nevertheless. As Holmes famously remarked, "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." And experience here teaches that judges aren't terribly inclined to validate this brand of claim.
But no matter. Roberts sued, asserting the usual host of constitutional claims, including claims for a taking of his property without compensation. We can't say we disagree with the result, so much as the court's analysis. The court determined there was no taking because the ban was an exercise of the State's police power.
The State argued "Section 790.222 does not effect any taking; instead, it prohibits the possession of contraband.” Slip op. at 8. To us, that circular reasoning misses the point, because bump stocks were not "contraband" prior to the prohibition. As we've written before, the analysis in these situations should not be confined to determining what power the government is exercising, because -- by definition in these regulatory takings cases -- the government is exercising something other than its eminent domain power.
The court could have undertaken the usual analysis, and likely reached the same result: is the bump stock which Roberts owns "private property," and if so, what does that mean? Did he own is subject to any "background principles" of property law? Is the legislature empowered to declare something like this a public nuisance and not pay for it? Is it fair to require owners of these things to eat the cost of their prohibition, or is this a burden the people of Florida all should share after they determined that these devices are not socially beneficial?
But instead of any of these trains of thought, we get nothing but the blanket assertion that because this statute was an exercise of Florida's police power, it's game, set, match. Very unsatisfying.
But a lot of the court's lack of analysis could be because the plaintiff didn't offer much in the way of argument:
Roberts makes no argument in support of these claims besides flatly asserting that the Complaint “clearly is well-organized, well-stated and has a more than sufficient statement of the claims.”Slip op. at 11.
Garbage in, garbage out. Why bring a case if you aren't going to set out any argument? All that does is create bad law, which just makes future cases that much harder.
But that's litigation for you.
Order, Roberts v. Bondi, No. 8:18-cv-1062 (M.D. Fla. Aug. 21, 2018)
