If the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is egregiously limited by huge swaths of so-called “sensitive places,” are law-abiding citizens deprived of one of their fundamental freedoms?
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) thinks so, and last week the gun rights stalwarts filed a reply brief with the U.S. Supreme Court. The writing added legal muscle to its challenge to Maryland’s sweeping ban on carrying a lawful firearm in a host of overlapping public spaces.
The high court returns next month with Novotny v. Moore on its docket.
Lawmakers blatantly circumvented landmark SCOTUS ruling
Maryland’s gun control regime attempted to neuter the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision reaffirming the people’s right to carry personal firearms away from home for self-defense.
State officials were forced against their clear will to issue concealed carry permits to qualified applicants. They argue Maryland now abides by the letter of that law, but the backhanded attempt to make most public places off-limits for legal carry makes the state’s apparatus a farce.
SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut noted that the government purposefully rendered those permits meaningless through random designations of scores of locations as “gun-free.”
The right to self-defense does not end at the property line
“The Supreme Court has been clear that the Second Amendment protects a right for individuals to carry for self-defense as they go about their daily lives,” Kraut explained. “Put bluntly, when forced by the Supreme Court to issue carry permits, Maryland simply made those permits useless everywhere. Today’s reply makes clear that neither Maryland nor other jurisdictions that passed similar laws should be allowed to so blatantly thumb their noses at the Supreme Court or the Constitution.”
Make no mistake, that’s exactly what authorities did in response to Bruen.
The reply brief acknowledged that “exceptional circumstances” can limit gun rights, just as freedom of speech isn’t universal in every situation.
But taking your family to a public park is hardly “exceptional,” and the people’s right to armed self-defense cannot be denied through legal chicanery.
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