Gun nuts handed a big loss as SCOTUS refuses to hear challenge to Maryland law

Bloomberg News: The U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed gun-rights advocates by letting stand a Maryland law that requires people to show a special need for protection to get a permit for carrying a handgun in public.

Six months after leaving intact a similar New York law, the justices today turned away an appeal by a Maryland man who was denied renewal of his permit to carry a handgun. A federal appeals court upheld the law in March, saying it was a reasonable effort to protect public safety and prevent crime.

The rejection, at least for the time being, keeps the justices out of the fray over the constitutional right to bear arms. The nation’s highest court hasn’t considered a Second Amendment case since 2010, when it said people have a right to have a handgun in the home for self-defense purposes.

Under the appeals court ruling, “the Second Amendment has no practical impact beyond the threshold of one’s home,” argued Raymond Woollard, the Maryland man who challenged the law along with the Bellevue, Washington-based Second Amendment Foundation. The National Rifle Association also backed the appeal.

Contrary to gun lobby bullshit, that 2010 case established gun ownership as a personal right. It didn’t get into the crazy-assed “rule by assassination” theory pushed by gun freaks who blather on about needing to kill tyrants — AKA, John Wilkes Booth’s argument. And this puts another nail in the coffin of that bloodthirsty and insane argument. By finding no reason to revisit the lower court’s finding that — in Wollard’s words — “the Second Amendment has no practical impact beyond the threshold of one’s home,” SCOTUS allows the right to bear arms to remain a severely limited right, with government able to put the good order of the community and the well-being of its citizens above the right of your average gun nut to nurse their fear with a concealed weapon. You have no constitutional to right to carry a concealed weapon. That is a privilege.

In fact, since the right ends at “the threshold of one’s home,” it kind of renders the tyrant-killing argument moot as well. That is, unless you assume that tyrants regularly go house to house, generously offering patriots the opportunity to put them down.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]