National DC's "May Issue" Struck Down by District Court.

[CountryGent]

In Wrenn vs DC, Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit struck down the "may issue" conceal carry law that requires a "good reason". The ruling may be read here. This language is interesting:

"At the Second Amendment's core lies the right of responsible citizens to carry firearms for personal self-defense beyond the home, subject to longstanding restrictions. These traditional limits include, for instance, licensing requirements, but not bans on carrying in urban areas like D.C. or bans on carrying absent a special need for self-defense. In fact, the Amendment's core at a minimum shields the typically situated citizen's ability to carry common arms generally. The District's good-reason law is necessarily a total ban on exercises of that constitutional right for most D.C. residents.

....

Just so, our opinion does little more than trace the boundaries laid in 1791 and flagged in Heller I. And the resulting decision rests on a rule so narrow that good-reason laws seem almost uniquely designed to defy it: that the law-abiding citizen's right to bear common arms must enable the typical citizen to carry a gun."
​

There is also an interesting footnote on page 22 that references the Ninth Circus' ruling.

"We do not agree with the Ninth Circuit that a ban on concealed carry can be assessed in isolation from the rest of a jurisdiction's gun regulations. As we've noted, text and history and precedent urge that the Second Amendment requires governments to leave responsible citizens ample means for self-defense at home and outside. So a regulation's validity may turn partly on whether surrounding laws leave ample options for keeping and carrying."
​

Anyway, just thought I'd pass it along.

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[ATCclears]

Federal Appeals Court Strikes Down D.C.'s Concealed-Carry Ban

A federal appeals court struck down the District of Columbia's restrictions on carrying concealed guns, ruling that the right to bear arms outside the home is at the core of the Second Amendment's protections.

The 2-1 ruling on Tuesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit recognized that "the rights to keep and bear arms are on equal footing" and said the D.C. law violated the Second Amendment by prohibiting most residents from carrying weapons in public.

The 2014 law required anyone seeking a license to carry a concealed gun to show "good reason to fear injury," such as serious threats of death or serious bodily harm. Living in a high-crime neighborhood wasn't reason enough, according to rules put out by D.C.'s chief of police.

"Bans on the ability of most citizens to exercise an enumerated right would have to flunk any judicial test that was appropriately written and applied, so we strike the District's law here," wrote Judge Thomas Griffith, an appointee of President George W. Bush, for the majority.

The decision breaks with at least four other federal appeals courts that upheld similar restrictions in New York, New Jersey, Maryland and California, though those courts offered varying views of the Second Amendment's strength in public.

At least one other appeals court has recognized a constitutional right to carry a gun outside the home, striking down an Illinois ban in 2012.

Most state restrictions on bearing weapons outside the home are looser than D.C.'s and allow residents to carry concealed guns without having to justify it. About a dozen states require no permits at all.

The Supreme Court has yet to review a concealed-carry case since its landmark 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, which recognized an individual's right to possess a gun for self-defense inside the home. The split that emerged with Tuesday's ruling could tempt the justices to take up the case if the D.C. government appeals.

The D.C. Circuit panel that delivered Tuesday's ruling also included Judge Karen Henderson, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, and Senior Judge Stephen Williams, a Reagan appointee.

Judge Henderson, writing in dissent, said the majority played down the Supreme Court's characterizations of the Second Amendment right as strongest in the home, as stated in its Heller decision.

"A right that is less notable and less acute cannot reside at the Second Amendment's core," she wrote, referring to carrying outside the home.

Karl Racine, D.C.'s attorney general, said he was considering asking the D.C. Circuit to rehear the case with more judges.

"The District of Columbia's 'good reason' requirement for concealed-carry permits is a common-sense gun regulation," Mr. Racine said in an emailed statement.

Charles Cooper, who represents one of the groups that challenged the D.C. law, said Tuesday's ruling deepened a split among federal appeals courts "and it makes it even more inevitable that the Supreme Court will have to take this issue up."


Mr. Cooper's client, the Pink Pistols, an organization that advocates for concealed firearms for the self-defense of the LGBTQ community, filed a lawsuit in December 2015and won an early victory when a judge temporarily blocked the D.C. law last year. The D.C. attorney general's office appealed the ruling.

The Second Amendment Foundation, a gun-rights group based on the West Coast, lodged a separate challenge that was consolidated with the Pink Pistols case. A federal trial judge ruled against the foundation last year, prompting the appeal to the D.C. Circuit.

Lawyers in the D.C. attorney general's office had argued that limits on carrying concealed weapons traced to the Middle Ages, and that at the time of the Second Amendment's ratification, in 1791, more than half the original states restricted firearms in fairs, markets and other populated places.

The laws were patterned after the Statute of Northampton, an English law enacted in 1328 that said "no man" could "go nor ride armed by night nor by day, in Fairs, Markets, nor in the presence of the Justices or other Ministers, nor in no part elsewhere."

That point wasn't convincing to Judge Griffith. "Happily, though, the state of the law in Chaucer's England—or for that matter Shakespeare's or Cromwell's—is not decisive here," he wrote.

Judge Griffith said historical restrictions on carrying guns weren't complete bans. By the time of the founding, the right to bear arms was thought to protect carrying for self-defense generally, he wrote.

The government "must leave ample channels for keeping and for carrying," he said, adding that a ban on carrying concealed guns could be permissible if the district allowed residents to carry guns openly, or vice versa.

Write to Joe Palazzolo at [email protected]

 

[Stomper]

Ooooooohhhh..... that's gonna clash with the 9th "Circus" ruling!!

 

[etrain16]

It will be interesting to see where this goes.

 

[Stomper]

It will be interesting to see where this goes.

Knowing how the world works.... straight to hell in a handbasket, most likely.

 

[Certaindeaf]

They'll probably say, "This is a District, shut up."


rainbow district

 

[nammac]

I thought I had heard that the Appeals Court basically directed the lower courts to "stand down" regarding his issues, that their decision settle the issue...

But I could be wrong, because my wife tells me I usually am...

 

[Stomper]

I thought I had heard that the Appeals Court basically directed the lower courts to "stand down" regarding his issues, that their decision settle the issue...

But I could be wrong, because my wife tells me I usually am...

Happy wife, happy life.

 

[ob1]

Talk about grasping at straws.....
They went all the way back to the 14th century Northampton law banning the carrying of arm's before the King's subjects.

Watch where your're pointing them broad swords boys !

 

[Slobray]

Talk about grasping at straws.....
They went all the way back to the 14th century Northampton law banning the carrying of arm's before the King's subjects.

Watch where your're pointing them broad swords boys !

I find it amusing that they quote laws from almost 700 years ago, but they can't seem to remember that about 240 years ago those same laws became null and void.


Ray