2nd Amendment -- Last Frontier

By Glen Wunderlich

Courts Split on Right to Carry Firearms Outside the Home

Unquestionably the hottest issue in Second Amendment litigation today is whether the Second Amendment protects a right to carry firearms outside the home for personal protection—and if so, what might be the limits on that right. Until recently, far too many courts have wrongly claimed that because the Supreme Court’s decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago only struck down bans on handgun possession in the home, that’s all there is to the Second Amendment.

Now, there are signs that this resistance is weakening. In a big win for gun owners’ rights in Maryland, on March 5, a federal judge ruled in the case of Woollard v. Sheridan that a key provision of the state’s gun laws is unconstitutional. Judge Benson Everett Legg declared that Maryland’s requirement for a “good and substantial reason” to obtain a concealed-carry permit violates the Second Amendment protection of the right to keep and bear arms. Though this is not an NRA-funded case, both the result and the reasoning give hope for future progress on the issue.

“The Court finds that the right to bear arms is not limited to the home,” Judge Legg wrote in his 23-page ruling. “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.’’

Judge Legg added, “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.”

From www.thinkingafield.org and the NRA