The US Supreme Court on Nov. 21 declined to take up a potentially important gun rights case examining whether a federal regulation
banning loaded firearms from vehicles in a government park violated the constitutional right to keep and bear arms, the Christian Science Monitor reported.
Lawyers for a Virginia man had asked the justices to examine a question left largely unresolved in the high court’s two prior landmark rulings identifying the scope and substance of Second Amendment protections. The question is: Does the Second Amendment guarantee a right to bear arms in public for personal protection? The court dismissed the case in a oneline order without comment. The action leaves lower court rulings intact and postpones the prospect of high court clarification on a key gun rights issue.
The dismissed appeal, Masciandaro v. US, had asked the court to examine whether Americans have a right to carry loaded weapons in public places for self-defense.
The rejected appeal stemmed from the June 2008 arrest of Sean Masciandaro for carrying a loaded handgun in his car on national park land. Masciandaro and his girlfriend were sleeping in his car which was parked improperly in a lot on park land along the Potomac River near Alexandria, VA.
A US Park Police officer woke Masciandaro by tapping on the window.
When Masciandaro produced his driver’s license, the officer noticed a large knife protruding from under the front seat. The officer asked Masciandaro if he had any other weapons. When he answered that he also had a loaded handgun, the officer placed Masciandaro under arrest.
Masciandaro said he often slept in his car while traveling on business and that he kept the gun for self-defense. The park where he was arrested was only 20 miles from his home in Woodbridge, VA.
Masciandaro was convicted of violating the federal regulation, and fined $150.
While his appeal was pending, the government changed its regulation, allowing the carrying of loaded firearms on federal land whenever that conduct is permitted under state law.
In addition, three weeks after his arrest, the Supreme Court issued its decision in the Heller case.
A panel of the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Masciandaro’s conviction, ruling that he had violated the law as it existed at the time of his offense.
The appeals court also ruled that the federal ban on loaded firearms in vehicles on park land was a reasonable regulation within the government’s power to enact and enforce Two of the three judges declined to address the underlying issue of whether the Second Amendment protects a right to carry loaded firearms in public for self defense. “We think it prudent to await direction from the court itself,” Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote.
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) filed a friend of the court brief challenging Judge Wilkinson’s perspective on the issue.
“No court should wish to feel responsible for a violent crime that could have been averted or disrupted had the court not ‘miscalculated as to Second Amendment rights’ and left the victim without arms for defense,” Alan Gura wrote in a brief urging the high court to take up the case.
In urging the Supreme Court not to take up the Masciandaro case, US Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said the government’s substantial interest in promoting public safety justified the federal ban on loaded weapons on federal land.
