Group to challenge North Carolina’s “state of emergency gun ban”

  While the second amendment victory that the Supreme Court handed down earlier this week on the Chicago handgun ban was a major victory because it reaffirmed the rights of all citizens to keep and bear arms regardless of where they live– the first time that the Supreme Court has ruled the second amendment is an individual right– it was also disappointing because it did not strike down the Chicago handgun ban outright.

  Even though this ruling did not strike down the Chicago handgun ban, this decision opened the door for more challenges in court of other gun restrictions, because the Supreme Court ruled that while some “common sense” gun restrictions were constitutional, outright bans and overly restrictive gun laws were not.

   However, the court did not rule on what type of laws were “common sense” and what laws would be considered overly restrictive and unconstitutional. This opens the door to other challenges of gun restrictions that will be taken on a one by one basis and decided individually.

   We are now finding out what the first challenge will be. The Second Amendment Foundation– the very same group that brought forward the challenge on the Chicago handgun ban– is now readying its next challenge. They plan to challenge North Carolina’s law that allows the state government to ban all weapons during a declared state of emergency.

Through this lawsuit in North Carolina, we intend to show that state emergency powers statutes that allow government officials to suspend fundamental civil rights, including the right to bear arms, are unconstitutional and therefore should be nullified,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb.
 
“Citizens do not surrender their civil rights just because of a natural or man-made disaster

  This seems like a very logical choice for the next challenge because there are two main arguments that many gun control advocates make in order to validate their opinion; first, the term “militia” refers to what today would be called the National Guard and all other branches of the military and not the people themselves, and second; that the second amendment was written during a time in which there were foreign nations still present in the country, therefore the second amendment was written strictly to defend the United States against foreign aggression on our own soil, and that it was also written during a time when Americans still feared that the federal government could easily– and probably would eventually– become tyrannical if not for the “militia” always ready to take up arms against the government. These people believe that for this reason the second amendment is outdated and irrelevant in today’s America.

  The Chicago handgun decision ended once and for all the first argument I stated when it ruled that the second amendment was an individual right, and if this North Carolina challenge is won, it will show that the government does not have the right to declare an emergency in which it will be allowed to infringe on civil rights, including the right to keep and bear arms, thereby destroying the argument that the second amendment is irrelevant because the government can not step in and take away our rights in today’s America, because that is exactly what the North Carolina law does.

  North Carolina actually used a snowstorm as an excuse to pass this law. Imagine that, a person is not allowed to defend himself because it is snowing outside!?

  It would seem to me that if a state of emergency was declared in North Carolina and mobs and riots broke out and people were looting stores, that people would have more of a need to defend themselves, their property, and their businesses, but this law does the exact opposite. While unlawful people are looting and rioting with weapons of all kinds, law abiding citizens are not allowed to defend themselves on the streets if need be.

  This is just the beginning, this is next lawsuit of many to come and it is going to be interesting to see how far the court is willing to go in upholding a person’s right to keep and bear arms. Momentum is on the side of the people and on the side of the constitution.