{"id":4174,"date":"2012-03-05T18:49:36","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T23:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4174"},"modified":"2014-03-11T17:35:45","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T21:35:45","slug":"a-civil-rights-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=4174","title":{"rendered":"A civil rights victory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today we scored what may be the most important civil-rights victory since the Heller ruling in 2008. Woollard v. Sheridan was found for the plaintiffs, and<br \/>\nMaryland&#8217;s law requiring concealed-carry applicants to show &#8220;good and substantial reason&#8221; for their permit applications has been found unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--> <\/p>\n<p>Consitutional carry &#8211; no permit at all required, as in Vermont, Alaska, Wyoming, and Arizona &#8211; would of course be better.  But the remarkable thing about this decision is the judge&#8217;s language in striking down the Maryland restrictions.<\/p>\n<p>Key sentences: &#8220;The Court finds that the right to bear arms is not limited to the home&#8221; and &#8220;A citizen may not be required to offer a \u2018good and substantial reason\u2019 why he should be permitted to exercise his rights. The right\u2019s existence is all the reason he needs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The standard the judge is setting up for the constitutionality of firearms laws comes very near the &#8220;strict scrutiny&#8221; standard associated with First Amendment law.  While the judge did not use the phrase &#8220;strict scrutiny&#8221;, he cited among reasons to strike down the law that it is not sufficiently narrowly tailored to the state&#8217;s public safety interests &#8211; a classic strict-scrutiny argument.<\/p>\n<p>The decision will be appealed to the Fourth Circuit appellate court, which has only a mixed record on Second-Amendment issues. But the plain and powerful language of the judge&#8217;s opinion will be difficult to overturn without outright ignoring the Supreme Court&#8217;s ruling in D.C. vs. Heller, setting the appellate court up for reversal.<\/p>\n<p>This is a major victory for civil rights, argued by the same Alan Gura who won the D.C. vs. Heller case.  With eleven mores states considering constitutional carry and a national right-to-carry reciprocity bill live in Congress, the legal climate around firearms rights is steadily improving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today we scored what may be the most important civil-rights victory since the Heller ruling in 2008. Woollard v. Sheridan was found for the plaintiffs, and Maryland&#8217;s law requiring concealed-carry applicants to show &#8220;good and substantial reason&#8221; for their permit applications has been found unconstitutional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-firearms","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4175,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4174\/revisions\/4175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}