By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
A federal district court judge in North Carolina has struck down that state’s emergency power to impose a ban on firearms and ammunition outside the home during a declared emergency, ruling that the provision violates the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
The ruling, by Judge Malcolm J. Howard, senior United States district judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina, subjected the state statute to “strict scrutiny,” the highest level of review when a constitutional challenge is made against a law.
The case, Bateman v. Purdue, was brought by the Second Amendment Foundation, Grass Roots North Carolina FFE and three individual plaintiffs. Defendants in the case were Gov. Beverly Purdue and Reuben F. Young, secretary of the state’s Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, in their official capacities.
SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb was elated, and he used the victory to make a blistering remark about the anti-gun lobby.
“When SAF attorney Alan Gura won the Heller case at the Supreme Court,” Gottlieb recalled, “the gun ban crowd said that we were a ‘one-trick-pony’ and that we would never knock out another gun law. Well, SAF has now knocked out gun laws in Maryland, Illinois and North Carolina.”
He noted that several states have similar statutes, and this ruling essentially “fires a shot across their bow.”
“We filed this lawsuit on the day we won the McDonald case against Chicago,” he said, “extending the Second Amendment to all 50 states. This was part of our strategy of winning firearms freedoms one lawsuit at a time.”
In his opinion, Judge Howard wrote, “…the court finds that the statutes at issue here are subject to strict scrutiny…While the bans imposed pursuant to these statutes may be limited in duration, it cannot be overlooked that the statutes strip peaceable, law abiding citizens of the right to arm themselves in defense of hearth and home, striking at the very core of the Second Amendment.”
But there was more, and it strikes at the heart of an argument that anti-gunners have been making since the 2008 Heller ruling that overturned the gun ban in Washington, D.C. Judge Howard noted that the high court, in the Heller ruling, clearly stated that the right to keep and bear arms “was valued not only for preserving the militia, but ‘more importantly for self-defense and hunting.”
“Therefore,” Judge Malcolm wrote, “the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms ‘is not strictly limited to the home environment but extends in some form to wherever those activities or needs occur’.”
“Under the laws at issue here,” the judge said, “citizens are prohibited from engaging, outside their home, in any activities secured by the Second Amendment. They may not carry defensive weapons outside the home, hunt or engage in firearm related sporting activities. Additionally, although the statutes do not directly regulate the possession of firearms within the home, they effectively prohibit law abiding citizens from purchasing and transporting to their homes firearms and ammunition needed for self-defense. As such, these laws burden conduct protected by the Second Amendment.”
