State gun storage law is argued before SJC
The Middlesex district attorney’s office argued before the state Supreme Judicial Court yesterday that a law that requires guns to be stored in locked containers or outfitted with trigger locks is valid.
But the attorney for a Billerica man charged with keeping a gun in an unlocked carrying case said the law is negated by a recent decision of the US Supreme Court.
While the Supreme Court struck down a tough handgun ban last year in the District of Columbia, the court “went out of its way to make clear that the right to bear arms, like all rights, is not unlimited,’’ said Assistant District Attorney Loretta M. Lillios. “It can be curtailed by regulatory measures.
The SJC is being asked to rule in a case in which Richard Runyan of Billerica was charged in April 2008 with improper gun storage.
A Lowell District Court judge threw out the charge, citing the June 2008 Supreme Court ruling in a case called District of Columbia v. Heller. Prosecutors appealed.
Attorney Brenden J. McMahon, representing Runyan, said the Supreme Court ruling held not only that the district’s “wholesale ban on guns is unconstitutional and violates the Second Amendment,’’ but that provisions requiring trigger locks were invalid.
“I submit to you that Heller stands for the proposition . . . that the state does not have a right to regulate to this extent the possession of unloaded firearms - or even loaded firearms, perhaps - in the home for lawful purposes such as self-defense,’’ said attorney Edward F. George Jr., who represented the Gun Owners’ Action League and Second Amendment Foundation Inc., which filed a friend-of-the-court brief.
The state attorney general’s office, state health officials, the state’s other district attorneys, groups representing police officers and chiefs, and activists against gun violence filed friend-of-the-court briefs supporting the law.
Overshadowing the arguments over the Massachusetts law is a decision expected by June from the Supreme Court, which is expected to determine whether the Second Amendment, which gives the people the “right to keep and bear arms’’ as part of a “well regulated militia,’’ applies to the states.
The amendments in the Bill of Rights were originally meant as restrictions on federal power, but over the years, on a case-by-case basis, the court has held that most of the amendments applied to the states, as well.
One notable exception is the Second Amendment, said Suffolk University law professor Gerard Clark, who teaches constitutional law.
The court did not say in its ruling in the Heller case, which originated in the District of Columbia (a federal enclave, not a state), whether the Second Amendment should be applied to the states.
Chief Justice Margaret Marshall said a number of gun law challenges were before the court, including more than one case being argued yesterday, and asked if the state court should rule assuming that the Supreme Court will apply the Second Amendment to the state, or if the state court should suspend judgment on cases until the Supreme Court rules.
