From Protect Minnesota and the Statesman.com:
Judge dismisses suit challenging Texas' concealed carry law
A federal judge in Lubbock on Thursday threw out the National Rifle Association's move to overturn a Texas law prohibiting 18- to 20-year-olds from carrying concealed handguns.
In dismissing the case that had drawn national interest, U.S. District Judge Sam Cummings ruled that "Texas has identified a legitimate state interest — public safety — and passed legislation that is rationally related to addressing that issue."
Under current law, Texans must be 21 or older to get a concealed-handgun permit. Members or veterans of the armed forces who are younger than 21 can also be licensed.
The ruling was seen as a win for the state, gun control advocates and university groups — including two student-government groups at the University of Texas at Austin — who had argued that Texans younger than 21 should not be licensed to carry handguns.
The case was filed by three Texans between 18 and 21 — Rebekah Jennings , Brennan Harmon and Andrew Payne — and the National Rifle Association, which argued that the Texas handgun licensing law was discriminatory and unconstitutional.
In his decision, Cummings ruled that the Second Amendment — the right to bear arms — "does not confer a right that extends beyond the home." He noted that under current law, Texans can possess guns in their homes without a state license.
Cummings noted in his ruling that a 2008 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court underscored that the Second Amendment right to bear arms "was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose."
Texas' licensing law "does not burden the fundamental right to keep and bear arms," Cummings wrote.
The opinion suggests that the age issue raised in the case should be settled at the state Capitol — "either to petition the Texas Legislature for a change in state law or, on a national level, to rally for a constitutional amendment."
Last September, Cummings dismissed a lawsuit filed by the NRA challenging the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting the sale of handguns to people younger than 21.
Representatives for the NRA and several Texas groups that had intervened in the case in support of the state law — Mothers Against Teen Violence and Students for Gun-Free Schools in Texas — could not immediately be reached for comment.
Daniel Vice, a senior attorney at the Brady Center To Prevent Gun Violence's Legal Action Project in Washington, hailed the decision.
"We are pleased the court rejected the NRA's extreme claim that the Second Amendment means that we must allow armed teens on our streets," Vice said. The Brady Center, an intervenor in the lawsuit, had cited studies concluding that 18- to 20-year-olds often lack the same ability as adults to "govern impulsivity, judgment, planning for the future, and foresight of consequences." They are also within the age range of offenders with the highest rates of homicide and criminal gun possession, according to court filings.
mward@statesman.com
1. Legally, eighteen year olds are adults, so the Brady Bunch is being disingenuous.
ReplyDelete2. Once they turn twenty-one, just about the whole population can get a carry license. You shouldn't celebrate too much.
there are similar age restrictions on drinking, and appropriately so.
DeleteSooner or later the global attitude that a civilized society is NOT an armed society will finally catch on here, backwards as we are on this.
It is just a matter of time.
Persons of the armed forces who is at least 18 years of age but not yet 21 years of age is eligible for a license to carry a concealed handgun if the person:
ReplyDelete(1) is a member or veteran of the United States armed forces, including a member or veteran of the reserves or national guard;
(2) was discharged under honorable conditions, if discharged from the United States armed forces, reserves, or national guard.
Also no CHL is required to keep and carry a hand gun in your private vehicle as long as it is not on your person and is concealed from view. As long as your not committing a crime, not a member of a gang or in gang activity or breaking any law other than common traffic violations. The person transporting the weapon is not otherwise restricted from owning a firearm.
Living in Texas all my life and never really cared to keep up with this stuff before untill I started to read internet places like this, has gotten me to do some real research about Texas.
See what happens when you get old, the house is quiet and my kids teach me about this internet thingy? Interesting stuff!
Glad you're enjoying it.
DeleteSo we can exclude a large class of people from bearing arms because of some nebulous concern about public safety. And yet we allow those same people who are so severely lacking in "... impulsivity [control], judgment, planning for the future, and foresight of consequences" to vote for all levels of government office?
ReplyDeleteSomething stinks here.
We can exclude a large class of people from bearing arms outside their home because they have no legitimate purpose in doing so. I don't even agree that this is a right, but it is something which because it impacts other people - unless you either want to disable the firearms so they can't fire, or you want to not have ammunition - it is not an activity which is limited in effect to the person who is armed.
ReplyDeleteOther people are affected, and they have a more important right NOT to be affected or impacted by those firearms.
"Legitimacy" of a desired activity in public is irrelevant. As citizens, we enjoy unfettered liberty. What is liberty? Citizens have the freedom to do whatever they want, wherever they want, as long as an activity does not infringe on the rights of others.
DeleteLaws and policies that legislators enact have a huge impact on public safety and the way that judges interpret such laws and policies has a huge impact on public safety ... a much greater impact on public safety than the current situation of armed citizens. So the judge is saying that adults who haven't reached the age of 21 can figure out the downstream and long term effects of the policies that elected people bring to the public ... but they cannot understand that losing control of their emotions and shooting someone is ill-advised. That is irrational to me. Either let legal aged adults possess firearms or don't let people vote until they are 21 years old.
As for the "you have no right to possess a firearm outside of your home" thing, how does stepping over my doorway into my yard change anything? How does stepping across the edge of my yard onto a public sidewalk change anything? A deranged homeowner could easily shoot at lots of people walking past their home every day on the sidewalk. They could shoot from inside their home or on the edge of their yard.
Just 60 years ago, anyone could walk into a hardware store or a sporting goods store and purchase a firearm right on the spot. A 14 year old could do it, no questions asked. Why wasn't it a problem back then? The problem today isn't guns, it's people who lack any sense of honor, personal accountability, and respect for others.
No they couldn't.
DeleteMore to the point, that something was done five years ago or sixty years ago or in 1860 doesn't alter the rightness of something.
I would argue with you Crunchie that firearms Do violate the rights of others, violently, every single day, and that is the reason for allowing them in only very limited circumstances and then only to qualified people who are willing voluntarily to provide proof of being drug-use free, and that they are not dangerously insane, and that they are willing to put up something like a bond to assure that anyone harmed by theri guns or their actions are compensated.
We have a right to be safe -- including from nuts with guns, or people who are emotional with guns, or people who are reckless with guns, or criminals with guns.
That our laws and rights are subject to the common good and general welfare is a premise of the U.S. Constitution, specifically in the preamble under heading of the general welfare, as well as the larger concept of the common good that applies to government and civilization generally.
Individuals parading around with deadly weapons is inherently uncivilized, and it is high time we did away with it.
Any time you're ready to impose tougher sentences for violent criminals, you'll have many of us on your side. But when you try to take away our right to do as we wish, so long we're not harming others, we will oppose you.
DeleteWe need to do both, Greg.
Deletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_good
ReplyDeleteDog gone,
ReplyDeleteLet me tell you why your position is way more dangerous than citizens with firearms. Our government used your justification to imprison American citizens of Japanese decent during World War II. There was no evidence, no witnesses, no charges of crimes, no grand juries, no due process. The U.S. government summarily rounded up and denied rights to a whole group of citizens for the "common good and general welfare". The U.S. government didn't trust that group of people and just couldn't take a chance that a few of those citizens might be spying for or collaborating with Japan. The easy solution: suspend the Constitution and deny virtually all of their rights and liberties.
Protecting the rights and liberties of individuals is so important that our courts have let violent, heinous criminals, who they knew were absolutely guilty of horrific violent attacks, walk free simply because law enforcement violated their rights or due process. How much more should we protect the rights and liberty of citizens who have committed no crimes?
No, we cannot suspend rights for the common good. That is a cleverly disguised description of mob rule. Mob rule is great if you are part of the mob ... and it is hell if you are a minority.
And no, firearms do not violate the rights of citizens every day. It is criminals who use firearms to violate the rights of citizens. I want to see such criminals prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. On the other hand citizens who have not attacked anyone should not be denied anything because of something a criminal has done.
What's next? Should we deny citizen's of Italian decent from operating businesses because a few of them might use those businesses as a front for organized crime?
Capn, You're going off the rails there a little bit. By the Common Good, I think what we mean is stricter gun control so that fewer criminals will get ahold of guns and so that some of the unfit guys who now qualify for gun ownership will not.
ReplyDeleteIt's quite a stretch for you to compare that to the internment of Japanese Americans in the 40s.
Getting rid of a false right to own guns - as in the right to slavery, or the divine right of kings are not genuine rights - does not imprison anyone, does not round up people, take them away from their houses and places of business on buses, and place them behind barbed wire fences patrolled by the army in the desert.
ReplyDeleteA REAL offense to rights was not ONLY the rounding up of Japanese Americans, it was the laws in states like California which prohibited the right to own real estate if you were Asian which preceded that event. It was racism, and it was a real denial of rights based on ethnicity, as were the anti-miscegenation laws which prohibited marrying between asians and other people.
Suggesting guns be curtailed is based on the fact that guns are lethal weapons which are frequently used to hurt and kill innocent people, our fellow Americans, while failing to do a counterbalancing good other than contributing to your fantasy life.
The right to own a gun and carry it everywhere you go is not a real right, it is no more a real right than the original constitutional right to own slaves was a legitimate right.
The right to be SAFE IS A REAL right, That means you have the right to be protected by law enforcement and a military from shared threats, and for anyone and everyone to have due process of law, including criminals.
Those bullets don't stay in guns enough of the time; too often, because of some nut with a gun, those bullets wander out the barrel, at speed, and into the buildings and bodies of innocent people.
The problem with firearms is that they are frequently carried by stupid people, or drunk people, or that they let bad people get their guns -- by doing things like selling and trading them without a background check. It is a problem because we are having one or more murder suicides and mass shootings - defined as two or more people - every week. We have bad uses of guns to shoot innocent people EVERY DAY. We have many more times the number of these incidents than countries where guns are not so prevalent.
And the people in THOSE countries with representative governments, and police and military are not only AS FREE as we are, because all those people we kill or injure or just scare every year have had their right to be safe denied by people with guns here ---THEY are MORE FREE than we are.
So get real, get a grip on reality instead of your gun butt for a change.
Dog gone says that citizens have no right to own guns. Thus she denies property rights. And why not? If you are going to deny someone the right to defend themselves effectively, why not deny their property rights?
ReplyDeleteThen she claims that carrying a firearm isn't a right just like owning slaves isn't a right. Owning slaves was never legitimate because it denies right to property, self-defense and life of the enslaved people ... kind of like denying the right of a 120 pound woman to own a gun, defend herself against a 200 pound rapist, and save her own life when he plans to kill her. In dog gone's world criminals are the "slave owners" rather than wealthy land owners. I, a firearm owner on the other hand, have never been a threat or danger to anyone and I have never denied anyone's right to property, self-defense, or life.
And of course dog gone uses the same tactic as the slave owners. If Natural Rights and the Constitution get in the way, just dehumanize the citizens so that they are not entitled to rights. So for citizens who want to carry firearms for personal protection or protection of their community, dog gone labels them stupid, insane, nuts, drunks, uncivilized, childish, and delusional ... thus they have no right to own property, defend themselves, or save their lives.
Then dog gone claims that we should curtail guns for lack of a counterbalancing good. First of all, ask the thousands of people that use guns to defend themselves every year about their counterbalancing good. Second, ask the people of Southern Arizona where the County Sheriff announced he could no longer protect the residents from drug smugglers ... that several thousand square mile area of public lands where the U.S. Department of the Interior posted signs telling U.S. citizens to stay out because local law enforcement could not protect the citizens and the federal government refused to protect the citizens.
Criminal use and acquisition of firearms is deplorable and should be prosecuted. The same goes for criminal attacks on citizens. Whether or not guns exist, criminals will attack citizens. Anyone who forces citizens to face criminal attacks with nothing but a cell phone is an accomplice to the criminal. They share responsibility for the resultant injuries.
You are welcome to go out in public unarmed and enjoy the consequences of that choice, whatever they may be. I have an obligation to protect and provide for my children. I hope I never have to face a criminal attack. But if I ever do face a criminal with a rock or a pipe who wants to bash in my skull, I want to have the choice to be armed. Along the same lines, if a rapist ever targets my wife or daughters, I want them to have the option to be armed.