Maryland's 'good reason' gun law voided

A federal judge has struck down a Maryland law barring residents from receiving handgun permits unless they have a good and substantial reason, in an opinion that gun rights advocates celebrated Monday as a monumentally important decision.

U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg ruled that the law violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms by requiring residents seeking concealed-carry permits to submit evidence showing that they face specific threats of violence outside their homes.

Judge Legg ruled that states are indeed allowed to place certain restrictions on gun permits to improve public safety, but Maryland law acts as an illegal rationing system that tries to simply reduce the number of guns in public without regard to an applicants fitness to carry a firearm.

A citizen may not be required to offer a good and substantial reason why he should be permitted to exercise his rights, he wrote in his opinion, which was issued Monday in Baltimore. The rights existence is all the reason he needs.

The lawsuit was filed by plaintiff Raymond Woollard, a Baltimore County man who received a gun permit in 2003, months after a home break-in that led to an armed altercation.

Mr. Woollard successfully renewed the permit in 2006, but his 2009 renewal application was denied by Maryland State Police and the states Handgun Permit Review Board on the grounds that he could not provide documents to verify threats occurring beyond his residence.

His lawsuit, filed in 2010 against state police and the review board, was backed by the Second Amendment Foundation, a Bellevue, Wash.-based gun rights advocacy group.

The state attorney general's office, which represented the defendants in the case, said it will appeal the ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In his ruling, Judge Legg notably cited two Supreme Court precedents 2008s District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the court ruled that the Second Amendment may extend to public places, and 2010s McDonald v. City of Chicago, in which the justices ruled that such a decision also should apply in states as it did in the District, which is a federal enclave.

Both cases were won by lawyer Alan Gura, who also represented Mr. Woollard and the Second Amendment Foundation.

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Maryland's 'good reason' gun law voided