by Dave Workman
Senior Editor
The right of citizens to carry firearms outside their homes is being considered simultaneously by federal courts in two separate circuits dealing with challenges by the Second Amendment Foundation in Illinois and Maryland, and a ruling in the Illinois case was anticipated as this issue of TGM went to press.
The Illinois case is Moore v. Madigan, a 2011 challenge by SAF, Illinois Carry and four private citizens, Michael Moore of Champaign, for whom the case is named, plus Peggy Fechter of Carmi, Jon Maier, a resident of Bloomington, and Charles Hooks of Percy.
Illinois Carry is a volunteer organization founded to educate the public about Illinois gun laws.
That case alleges that Illinois statutes that completely ban the carrying of handguns for self-defense are “inconsistent with the Second Amendment.” SAF is represented by attorneys David Jensen and David Sigale. Defendants in this case are Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and State Police Superintendent Hiram Grau.
According to SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “We are awaiting a ruling at any time from the Court of Appeals on this case.” The Illinois Legislature has had many opportunities to adopt some form of concealed carry in the Prairie State. But each time, gun rights advocates have been frustrated by anti-gunners in Springfield and Chicago.
The Moore case was filed after SAF won its challenge of the Chicago handgun ban in 2010, in McDonald v.City of Chicago.
Illinois remains the only state that does not have some kind of carry statute. Gunowners have sought to change this for years, and when the legislature failed to act, the federal court provided their only other option after the McDonald ruling incorporated the Second Amendment to the states through the 14th Amendment.
There has been considerable support from the state’s gun owners. Gottlieb recalled that in the days immediately following the initial filing last year, SAF received inquiries from Illinois residents about joining the lawsuit as plaintiffs.
Gottlieb said this case has never been intended to force Illinois into some regulatory scheme, but only to clarify that the state’s current regulatory ban on firearms carry is impermissible under the Second Amendment.
But there are serious ramifications, the most fundamental being that an affirmative ruling by the court would extend the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms beyond the doorstep of one’s home.
It is that very issue that came up in a ruling by Federal District Judge Benson Everett Legg in the Maryland case of Woollard v. Sheridan, currently on appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Woollard case, filed in July 2010 on behalf of a Maryland resident who had been denied the renewal of his carry permit, challenges the arbitrary nature of that state’s licensing process, which requires that a citizen provide a “good and substantial reason” for wanting to carry a personal protection firearm. Raymond Woollard already had a permit, and it had been renewed once before Maryland authorities denied his second renewal.
He got the permit in the wake of a 2002 confrontation in his own home during which he and his son both held an intruder at gunpoint. Woollard’s permit was renewed in 2005, after the man was released from prison. At last report, that man was living only a few miles from Woollard’s home in rural Maryland.
Recently, Judge Legg lifted a stay on his order requiring the state to begin issuing permits, but the state obtained another stay from the appeals court.
At the time, Gottlieb noted in a press statement that “There is no good reason for the state to continue violating the constitutional rights of its citizens just to maintain this burdensome and arbitrary system.” In his original ruling, 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’.” And there was another hammer blow to anti-gunners in the Legg ruling.
“A citizen may not be required to offer a ‘good and substantial reason’ why he should be permitted to exercise his rights,” Legg wrote. “The right’s existence is all the reason he needs.” It was an important hurdle because anti-gunners have argued since the McDonald and earlier Heller rulings that the right to keep and bear arms was confined to the home. Gottlieb and other gun rights advocates have consistently dismissed that contention.
“Laws that empower bureaucrats to deny the exercise of a fundamental civil right because they cannot show good cause to exercise that right can’t possibly stand up under constitutional scrutiny,” Gottlieb said at the time the lawsuit was filed, and Judge Legg’s ruling supported that position.
Gottlieb told TGM that the Maryland appeal is on a “fast track,” and that if the appellate court rulings in the Maryland and Illinois cases conflict, the issue could go before the US Supreme Court during the next session. It would be the third leg of restoring the Second Amendment, he suggested, because in the 2008 Heller ruling, the high court affirmed that the amendment protects an individual right. In the McDonald ruling two years later, the court extended the Second Amendment to all 50 states.
A case dealing with the right to keep and bear arms outside of the home might open challenges to local and state laws that have prevented armed citizens from carrying in certain public venues, such as municipal, county and state parks, and other common areas.
Gottlieb intimated that each of the cases filed by SAF and its co-plaintiffs across the country are designed to incrementally chip away at onerous gun control laws that have been adopted over the past several years, dating back generations in some cases.
It is an effort to reverse the erosion of gun rights.
About two years ago, SAF adopted a slogan that now appears more appropriate than ever: “Winning Firearms Freedom One Lawsuit at a Time.”
