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State's highest court to mull gun safety law

E-mail|Link|Comments () November 4, 2009 02:38 PM

By Globe Staff

The state's highest court will review the validity of a state law that requires gun owners to safely store their weapons. It will be the first test in Massachusetts of a landmark US Supreme Court ruling that Americans have the constitutional right to own guns and stow them as they see fit.

The state Supreme Judicial Court will hear oral arguments Thursday in the case of a Billerica man whose disabled son was accused of shooting a BB gun at a neighbor and who then showed police officers where his father kept other unlocked weapons.

A Lowell District Court judge cited the Supreme Court's ruling in dismissing the case against Richard Runyan of Billerica, who was charged in April 2008 with improperly storing a semiautomatic hunting rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, and a drawer full of ammunition.

In June 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia vs. Heller that Washington, D.C., which had the nation's strictest gun-control laws, could not require gun owners to keep their weapons disassembled and that the Second Amendment provides individuals the right to keep and bear arms for their personal use.

But the court did not indicate whether the Second Amendment superseded state and local laws, and as a result, it has sparked lawsuits and rulings throughout the country similar to the decision in Lowell District Court.

In a brief to the Supreme Judicial Court, prosecutors in the Middlesex district attorney's office argue that the Second Amendment applies only to Congress and the federal government. They argue that the Constitution allows states to make their own laws regulating gun ownership and that the Massachusetts Constitution has greater authority in this case.

But Brenden J. McMahon, the Lowell lawyer representing Runyan, argued that the Second Amendment should apply to Massachusetts as much as the First Amendment and the rest of the Constitution.

"It appears from the Supreme Court's opinion in [the District of Columbia case], the Second Amendment is a fundamental right" that should be applied to the states, McMahon said in his brief.

"It follows that if the rights conferred on the citizens of the District of Columbia are so fundamental to self defense it would seem illogical they would not apply to the citizens of the Commonwealth and the other states as well," he argued.