Fascinating article today in WaPo about Bob Levy, the man behind the lawsuit that struck down Washington, D.C.’s strict gun-control statute:
Meet the lawyer who conceived the lawsuit that gutted the District’s tough gun-control statute this month. Meet the lawyer who recruited a group of strangers to sue the city and bankrolled their successful litigation out of his own pocket.
Meet Robert A. Levy, staunch defender of the Second Amendment, a wealthy former entrepreneur who said he has never owned a firearm and probably never will.
[snip]
It was his idea, his project, his philosophical mission to mount a legal challenge to the city’s “draconian” gun restrictions, which are among the toughest in the nation. The statute offends his libertarian principles, Levy said. And it is entirely his money behind the lawsuit that led a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to strike down the statute this month, a ruling that stunned D.C. officials and gun-control advocates. The city said it will appeal the decision.
I’m not surprised that the city will appeal, but it’ll be interesting to see how, since they can’t make much of a case that the statute has reduced violent crime.