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* Original dated: Tue Dec 24, 07:29

From: FHA 
Subject: PA-RKBA! Scrappy lawyer mounts challenge to state's assault weapons ban.

Friends,
   If only there were more people in the country like this man..... 
-- 
Keep Smilin'
Fred

Cogito, ergo armo.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even
though checked by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who
neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight
that knows neither victory nor defeat.

T. Roosevelt
=======================================================

A lonely fight for gun rights. 
Scrappy lawyer mounts challenge to state's assault weapons ban. 

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/12/23/MN210896.DTL

Just before it became illegal to own military-style assault weapons in
California about three years ago, Gary Gorski went shopping.  The suburban
Sacramento lawyer already had one high-powered rifle sitting in his home
safe, but he rushed out to buy seven more.  Just on principle.

He consulted gun advocates -- what were they going to do about this ban,
what advice did they have?  -- but no one pledged support.  So, by himself,
he hunkered down in his small office and cranked out a lawsuit to overturn
the assault weapons ban.

"No one is backing me on this," Gorski said the other day, about
a week after the Ninth U.S.  Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco
ruled against him.

But that didn't stop him.  While many people assume this latest fight
against gun control in California is being waged by the National Rifle
Association or state gun owner groups, the real contestant is Gorski, a
virtual unknown, who filed the challenge on behalf of nine plaintiffs --
most of them rugby buddies.
Variously described as a "loose cannon" and a dogged worker
"with the heart of a champion," Gorski, 40, is definitely one
thing -- persistent.

A solo practitioner who usually takes employment cases, has no secretary
and copies and collates his own briefs at Kinko's, Gorski has filed a
petition for a rehearing before a larger panel of judges and vows if that
fails to take his arguments to the U.S.  Supreme Court.  By himself, if
necessary.

Not even the state gun lobby, gun owners' associations or the NRA are
stepping in to help him fight what many feel is a futile attempt to
challenge the ban on Second Amendment grounds before the federal court in
San Francisco.  One gun lobbyist calls some of the vehement language in
Gorski's appeals court brief "inflammatory and unwise." That
would be the part where he invokes the example of Nazi Germany.

So now Gorski is hunkering down again, this time in a cost-cutting home
office.  He calls it the War Room a spare bedroom equipped with his Dell
computer, a phone, a few law books and a cherished autographed picture of
his hero, pro wrestler-turned-politician Jesse Ventura, Minnesota's
governor.

More than one person has pointed out the resemblance: similar hairdo, or
lack of it, similar buffed muscles and, Gorski's favorite, similar
independent streak.  If the gun groups won't support him, so be it, he
said. "I'm the kind of person to take the horse by the reins and go
with it," said Gorski, at home recently wearing his usual work gear, a
sweatshirt and jeans -- he only wears suits when he goes to court.  Around
him, there was the usual whirlwind of activity.

Several of his rugby friends -- big guys, with even bigger shoulders -- had
dropped by and were standing around the kitchen.  His German shepherd,
Zeus, was running around with a toy soccer ball.  His wife of five years,
Caroline, was chopping onions.

'GARY'S WORLD'

"Welcome to Gary's world," she said.  "It's Grand Central
here.  People hang out here because they want to be around Gary."

"Gorby," as his rugby friends call him, grew up in Delaware,
where his father was an electrician and his mother was a keypunch operator
on an assembly line making pipes.  His father never had guns at home, but
didn't mind his son having one, said Gorski, who recalls bringing a gun to
his Catholic school so he could go goose hunting later that day.

"The principal says, 'Is that loaded?' " Gorski said.  "I
told him no and he said, 'Keep it in your locker.' "

Asked about horrific school shootings, such as Columbine, and the fact that
students brought guns on campus he said he blames "rich parents"
for failing to control and care for their kids.

What about gun accidents?  Like many advocates of the right to own guns, he
believes that responsible ownership is the answer.  He keeps his own guns
in a safe.  When a reporter visited him, Gorski showed off the guns, but
made a point of not letting anyone see where the gun safe is.

After high school in Delaware, where by his own description he "was
not a stellar student," Gorski enlisted in the Army in 1980, serving
in an air cavalry unit in the United States and in Europe.  Later,
determined to get the college education his parents never had, he went to
the University of Delaware and then, after hitchhiking west, to Sacramento
State University. He studied law at Delaware Law School and supported
himself working as a bouncer at a strip club.

After passing the bar, he briefly did insurance company defense work, but
found that didn't suit him. So he moved to Sacramento and went into solo
practice in 1994.

THE LOUT IN THE BAR

Caroline Gorski, a software saleswoman, recalls meeting him for the first
time when he bumped into and then spilled his drink on her in a bar.  She
expected an apology.  What she got, instead, was, "That's the breaks,
kid."

Fortunately, she didn't recognize him as the lout in the bar when the two
met again six months later. Soon they were engaged and married.

In her entire life, Caroline Gorski said, she's shot a gun only once --
during a brief lesson from her husband.  But it's not something she wants
to repeat, and her husband agrees.  If people broke into their house, she
would be safer giving them "a tongue lashing," he said.

"Personally, I don't agree that we have all these guns," she
said.  "But I agree with the principle."

And the principle is what it's about, Gary Gorski said. He is the kind of
lawyer who spent 100 hours getting the last $300 check owed to a client
from the government.  Seeing himself as the brash, scrappy lawyer who
relishes battling the powerful Harvard-trained government lawyers who sit
at the other table, Gorski usually handles cases of employees who claim
they were fired unjustly or faced retaliation from bosses.  He has
represented deputy U.S.  marshals in a suit against supervisors and a
homeless woman suing police for brutality.

In the gun control case, he said, he's not fighting for the right to own
assault weapons because he loves them.  He's fighting because he loves his
constitutional rights and is wary of government power.  He believes, like
many gun advocates, that the Second Amendment guarantees the right of
citizens to bear arms.  Without that, he said, citizens have no recourse
against the possibility of government tyranny.

"I don't fear anyone," he said, "but my government."

The appeals court judges, in a 3-0 decision, upheld the legality of
amendments adopted in 1999 to an earlier ban.  The amendments -- adopted in
response to a proliferation of shootings involving military-style assault
weapons -- outlawed 75 high-powered weapons with rapid-fire capabilities.

The judges disagreed that the Second Amendment applies to individual rights
to own guns, but instead was adopted to ensure effective state militias
could be maintained.  But the fact that the court saw fit to issue a
lengthy analysis of the case was noteworthy in itself, said Tim Rieger, a
deputy attorney general who argued against Gorski.  The court's ruling
contradicts one made by the U.S.  Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans,
which could prompt the highest court to take up the matter, he said.

"To have gotten the analysis, I would say he certainly has gotten the
opportunity and justification to bring it to the U.S.  Supreme Court,"
Rieger said.  "I don't know if they'll hear it."

'PASSIONATE' LEGAL BRIEF

Rieger, used to reading dry legal briefs, said he found Gorski's
"unusual" and "passionate." In the brief, Gorski uses
the argument often employed by opponents of gun control that by taking guns
away from citizens, Germany's Nazi regime ensured that firearms ultimately
went only to such groups as the Nazi Waffen-SS and Hitler Youth.

Chuck Michel, a spokesman for the California Rifle and Pistol Association
and an NRA lawyer, said he sympathized with Gorski's impatience, but said
his approach was "not the way to go about correcting the
problem." Michel has filed a lawsuit in Fresno Superior Court
challenging the weapons ban on the basis of its ambiguity.  Gorski, he
said, is a "well-intentioned loose cannon."

Gorski shrugs off such criticism.  He's approaching the case the same way
he does rugby -- to win.

"I never underestimate my friend Gary Gorski," said Marcus Davis,
one of the rugby-playing plaintiffs, who is a bank vice president living
near Roseville (Placer County).  "He has the heart of a champion.  . 
.  .  He does everything he does 110 percent."

Davis said he owns a few deer rifles and shotguns but has no assault
weapons himself.  Most of the other plaintiffs also own guns, but some
don't, Gorski said.  They come from all political backgrounds, but most
have a libertarian bent and are not part of a gun club.  Gorski himself
said he no longer hunts.  He doesn't have time, but is saving his guns as
props for his legal case and for future generations.

These days, he is taking on other cases to help pay the bills, sharing some
of them with Dan Karalash, a criminal defense lawyer who helped work on the
assault weapons brief.  But mostly, he is focused on his mission -- getting
his case heard.

"There is no gray area with Gary," said his wife, Caroline. 
"People think he's a Neanderthal or they love him."

E-mail Katherine Seligman kseligman{at}sfchronicle.com.


"Our Rights are not what's wrong in Pennsylvania"

The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania guarantees your right
to bear arms in Article 1 Section 21: "The right of Citizens to bear
arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned."

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