Federal Judge Says Gun Owners Need not Provide 'Good Reason,' Rules Maryland Law Unconstitutional

On Monday a Federal judge ruled that Maryland residents do not have to provide a "good and substantial reason" to legally own a handgun, striking down the state's current requirement for obtaining a permit as unconstitutional.

According to Fox News, U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg wrote that while states are allowed some leeway in deciding the way residents exercise their Second Amendment rights, Maryland's goal was to limit the number of firearms that individuals could carry. He felt the state was essentially creating a rationing system that only rewarded people who provided the right reason as to why he or she wanted to own a gun.

"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."

Fox explains:

Plaintiff Raymond Woollard obtained a handgun permit after fighting with an intruder in his Hampstead home in 2002, but was denied a renewal in 2009 because he could not show he had been subject to "threats occurring beyond his residence."

Woollard appealed, but his appeal was rejected by the review board, which found he hadn't demonstrated a "good and substantial reason" to carry a handgun as a reasonable precaution. The suit filed in 2010 claimed that Maryland didn't have a reason to deny the renewal and wrongly put the burden on Woollard to show why he still needed to carry a gun.

"People have the right to carry a gun for self-defense and don't have to prove that there's a special reason for them to seek the permit," said Woollard's attorney Alan Gura, who Fox reports has challenged handgun bans in the District of Columbia and Chicago as an attorney with the Second Amendment Foundation. "We're not against the idea of a permit process, but the licensing system has to acknowledge that there's a right to bear arms."

He added, "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.'"

SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb affirmed "Judge Legg's ruling takes a substantial step toward restoring the Second Amendment to its rightful place in the Bill of Rights and provides gun owners with another significant victory."

"The federal district court has carefully spelled out the obvious, that the Second Amendment does not stop at one's doorstep, but protects us wherever we have a right to be," he added.

Fox adds:

The lawsuit names the state police superintendent and members of the Handgun Permit Review Board as defendants. A spokesman from Maryland's attorney general's office was not immediately available to comment.

Many states require gun permits, but six states, including Maryland, issue permits on a discretionary basis, Gura said. In most of those states, these challenges have not succeeded in U.S. District Courts, but they are being appealed, he said.

"Most states that choose to regulate the right to bear arms have licensing systems that are objective and straightforward," Gura said. "That's all that we want for Maryland."

(h/t: Fox News)