WHY THE LEGAL DEFENSE FUND

K. L. Jamison

Currently $250,000 is in contention. The money is the bond filed by anti-gun elements in a lawsuit designed to kill the License To Carry law. The plaintiffs were forced to file a substantial bond to cover potential damages to Bullseye Range who intervened in the lawsuit as a defendant. A year and a half after the Supreme Court ruled the law constitutional, but the process unconstitutional the money is still in limbo. Our side ultimately prevailed, but because of the mixed ruling by the Court the disposition of the money is still in question. We might get all of it, we might be some of it, we might get none of it. Bullseye did not intervene in the lawsuit for money it did so for principle.

The NRA had not entered the lawsuit for the first hearings on the case. It would do so later as a “friend of the court”, providing invaluable expertise, but as a “friend” it did not have the right to speak or otherwise participate in the case. It was considered essential from a political standpoint, a practical standpoint, and as a matter of honor, to have a party in the case who could represent the interests of individual Missouri shooters; Bullseye Range agreed to fill this role. Without a party representing individual Missouri shooters the plaintiffs would have represented the struggle as between the political power of the NRA and Missouri voters, who voted against License To Carry in 1999. We needed to have a seat at the table because the Missouri Attorney General’s Office was defending the law, and the Attorney General hates us. During the Proposition B lawsuit this same Attorney General sat down with the plaintiffs and wrote ballot language which made it look like the law would cost each county hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Proposition B went down to defeat. As a matter of honor we wanted to have a seat at the table because we have always been the best advocates for our own interests.

Attorneys for the Legal Defense Fund ensured that the plaintiffs would have to post a quarter-million dollar bond, which quashed their threat to sue every county that dared to issue licenses. It kept them out of a quarter-million dollars worth of trouble in the last election. It has also cost them $35,000 in interest payments over the last two years. The next time the prohibitionists need a bond for a lawsuit against us they may find a reluctance to hand over a young fortune instead.

Beyond forcing the opposition to tie up their money, the Legal Defense Fund added to the strength of our arguments, advised preparations for Supreme Court argument, caught mistakes in the Attorney General’s briefs, and may have kept them honest. These are things that would not have been done without the Legal Defense Fund.

Today the only party contesting the distribution of the $250,000 is the Legal Defense Fund. We did not start this for money, if we end up with money it will go first to the attorney fees. If there is money left over, it will be distributed in the same way we have always made decisions; after consultation with all interested parties.

We did not enter this case for money. We entered it to prove that individual Missouri shooters can and will protect their rights and will stay in the fight as long as it takes. We prove this every day the case goes on.