Monday, March 05, 2012

Some good news among the gloom

From CBS:

BALTIMORE (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that Maryland’s handgun permit law is unconstitutional.

In an opinion filed Monday, U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg says a requirement that residents show a “good and substantial reason” to carry a handgun infringes their Second Amendment right to bear arms. He says it isn’t sufficiently tailored to the state’s public safety interests.

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

The lawsuit, which names the state police superintendent and members of the Handgun Permit Review Board, was also filed on behalf of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Second Amendment Foundation.

Maryland is a blue state.  In fact it is the home state of our esteemed Vice President, Joe "halfwit" Biden. 

That they are being held to the constitution on the manner of firearms law is a sign of how much progress had been made in the field of Second Amendment law.