The state’s highest courtroom has issued a pair of choices relating to the rights of nonresidents to hold firearms by the Bay State, discovering that, whereas among the commonwealth’s previous licensing guidelines had been in reality unconstitutional, modifications made to the regulation within the wake of a significant 2022 Supreme Court docket choices move the authorized sniff take a look at.
The choices issued Tuesday — Commonwealth v. Dean F. Donnell, Jr. and Commonwealth v. Philip J. Marquis — each cope with costs levied towards nonresident gun house owners discovered to be unlawfully in possession of firearms after police responded to a automotive crash scene in Massachusetts, and the affect of the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s determination in New York State Rifle & Pistol Affiliation, Inc. v. Bruen on the state’s related gun legal guidelines.
In response to the courtroom, a cost of illegal possession of a firearm filed within the Donnell case failed to satisfy constitutional scrutiny as a result of the underlying regulation allowed the Colonel of the Massachusetts State Police an excessive amount of discretion on who might and couldn’t possess a firearm, no matter their suitability in any other case.
In such a case, in accordance with the courtroom, the difficulty with the regulation lies with its wording, particularly the “may issue” phrase prohibited after the Bruen determination, and since “it vested impermissible discretion in the licensing authority to grant or deny firearm licenses to nonresidents.”
“We hold that the version of the Commonwealth’s nonresident firearm licensing scheme in effect at the time of the offense violates the Second Amendment. Accordingly, as the defendant was charged with violating (the law) after the Supreme Court issued Bruen, he is entitled to dismissal of that charge,” Affiliate Justice Frank Gaziano wrote for the courtroom.
In deciding Bruen, in accordance with Gaziano, “The Supreme Court indicated that such discretionary ‘may issue’ firearm licensing regimes are presumptively invalid.”
Marquis confronted an identical cost that got here nicely after the Bruen determination and after the Bay State up to date its firearms legal guidelines to take away cases of “may issue” and changed them with “shall issue” guidelines.
A decrease courtroom initially agreed with the defendant’s movement to dismiss a cost of illegal possession of a firearm, noting the Commonwealth had didn’t “meet its burden under Bruen” by demonstrating that the state’s nonresident guidelines had been “consistent with the nation’s history and tradition of firearm regulation” and due to this fact nonetheless constitutional.
In response to the Supreme Judicial Court docket, that constitutional problem to the state’s up to date nonresident licensing scheme fails as a result of the regulation was modified to take away discretion from licensing authorities, and Marquis’ movement to see his costs undone fails as a result of he by no means tried to safe a license to hold earlier than he was charged for not having one.
“The defendant has standing to bring an as-applied challenge to the Commonwealth’s nonresident firearm licensing scheme if — but only if — the defendant applied for (and was denied) a license under that scheme,” the choose wrote. “Because the defendant did not do so, he lacks standing to bring an as-applied challenge to the Commonwealth’s nonresident firearm licensing scheme.”
