Monday - March 05, 2012

I Hope NJ , NY, CA, CT, and Washington DC are listening

Wow, there is at least one federal judge with a functioning brain. Outstanding.

“A citizen may not be required to offer a good and substantial reason why he should be permitted to exercise his rights. The right‘s existence is all the reason he needs.”

A federal court ruling in Maryland, that the Second Amendment right to bear arms extends beyond the home and that citizens may not be required to offer a “good and substantial reason” for obtaining a concealed carry permit, is a huge victory, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.

Ruling in the case of Woollard v. Sheridan – a case brought by SAF in July 2010 on behalf of Maryland resident Raymond Woollard, who was denied his carry permit renewal – the U.S. District Court for Maryland ruled that “The Court finds that the right to bear arms is not limited to the home.”

U.S. District Court Judge Benson Everett Legg noted, “In addition to self-defense, the (Second Amendment) right was also understood to allow for militia membership and hunting. To secure these rights, the Second Amendment’s protections must extend beyond the home: neither hunting nor militia training is a household activity, and ‘self-defense has to take place wherever [a] person happens to be.’”

“This is a monumentally important decision,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The federal district court has carefully spelled out the obvious, that the Second Amendment does not stop at one’s doorstep, but protects us wherever we have a right to be. Once again, SAF’s attorney in this case, Alan Gura, has won an important legal victory. He was the attorney who argued the landmark Heller case, and he represented SAF in our Supreme Court victory in McDonald v. City of Chicago.”

“Equally important in Judge Legg’s ruling,” he added, “is that concealed carry statutes that are so discretionary in nature as to be arbitrary do not pass constitutional muster.”

At issue in the case is the Maryland statute which says that the Secretary of the State Police can issue a carry permit if the applicant “has good and substantial reason to wear, carry, or transport a handgun, such as a finding that the permit is necessary as a reasonable precaution against apprehended danger.” Md.Code Ann., Pub. Safety § 5-306(a)(5)(ii).

In today’s decision on the merits, the “good and substantial reason” requirement was ruled to violate the Second Amendment. The court held that the Second Amendment right is not limited to self-defense in the home. It also includes the militia and hunting. None of the Second Amendment rights can logically be confined solely to the home: “In addition to self-defense, the right was also understood to allow for militia membership and hunting. To secure these rights, the Second Amendment‘s protections must extend beyond the home: neither hunting nor militia training is a household activity, and ‘self-defense has to take place wherever [a] person happens to be’.”

Washington DC seems to think your Second Amendment rights stop at your front door. New Jersey is one of those supposed “may issue” states for Concealed Carry (CCW) and requires a “proof of justifiable need”, though in reality the only permits ever issued are to retired police, and the rare rich and politically very well connected. Even being kidnapped by biker gangs out on bail and threatened with death is not “justifiable need” according to the state, but creating a big enough lawsuit IS. The other “may issue” states have laws with their own wording, but it generally boils down to either proving your need or being on a very short list of approved people decided by the local or county law enforcement types. Today’s decision by the United States District Court puts a huge dent in the “prove your need” argument. Unfortunately, it ain’t over yet ...

The case is headed to the Fourth Circuit, which has a mixed record on Second Amendment issues. From there, Woollard could be the case in which the Supreme Court chooses to tell recalcitrant lower federal courts that Heller and McDonald really do mean what they say: that the Second Amendment includes the right to carry, albeit not in “sensitive places,” and the government may, if it wishes, require that carry be open rather than concealed.

Hey, I’ve got nothing against open carry. I’d just need to buy a cowboy hat to go with the Wild West look.

From the decision:

A law that burdens the exercise of an enumerated constitutional right by simply making that right more difficult to exercise cannot be considered “reasonably adapted” to a government interest, no matter how substantial that interest may be. Maryland’s goal of “minimizing the proliferation of handguns among those who do not have a demonstrated need for them,” id. at 40, is not a permissible method of preventing crime or ensuring public safety; it burdens the right too broadly. Those who drafted and ratified the Second Amendment surely knew that the right they were enshrining carried a risk of misuse, and states have considerable latitude to channel the exercise of the right in ways that will minimize that risk. States may not, however, seek to reduce the danger by means of widespread curtailment of the right itself. “[E]ven the most legitimate goal may not be advanced in a constitutionally impermissible manner.”

Woolard had also sued that Maryland’s law violated his 14th Amendment rights, ie “may issue” is not exactly what you’d call Equal Protection. The judge, having decided that the 2A violation was sufficient, did not venture into 14A territory.

Please be aware that Maryland does not currently see a difference between open carry and concealed carry. In that state, it is the right to carry PERIOD that was under question. Most of us understand “open carry” to mean having a gun in a holster at your side, visible; “concealed carry” means having a gun hidden on your person or in your effects (glove compartment, purse, coat pocket). “brandishing”, a term not used in this case, is considered by some (the Right) to be the act of pointing a gun at somebody in a threatening manner, while others (the far Left) consider a child making a crayon drawing of some stick figure making “finger guns” to be an act of brandishing sufficient for arrest, psychoanalysis, a scholastically enforced regime of mind altering drugs, and perhaps arrest of the parents as well. Thus they show Zero Tolerance for your natural rights.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/05/2012 at 04:50 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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