Mance v. Whitaker

By Ilya Shapiro, Trevor Burrus, Matthew Larosiere Ilya Shapiro, Trevor Burrus, Matthew Larosiere

You can find just about any kind of restaurant imaginable in our nation’s capital, but what you won’t find, no matter how hard you look, is a gun store. D.C. residents who want to buy guns, like Tracey and Andrew Hanson, have to leave the district to get them. D.C. law specifically allows residents to buy firearms from outside the District.

So the Hansons visited Frederic Mance, a federally licensed gun dealer in Texas. D.C. law had no problem with the Hansons buying a gun from Mance, and the law of Texas allowed Mance to sell to the Hansons. The Hansons agreed to buy handguns from Mance in what would be an otherwise entirely lawful transaction, but there was a problem: the federal government (of course).

Federal law categorically forbids firearms dealers from selling handguns to anyone not a resident of the state in which the dealer does business. The purported justification for this restriction is that the government doesn’t believe licensed dealers can handle complying with the laws of the purchaser’s state — even though they are required to …Read the Rest

Source:: Cato Institute