Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr offers support for gun owner rights

ATLANTA — Officials with Attorney General Chris Carr’s office announced Thursday that he has joined a 21-state coalition in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to defend the rights of gun owners.

The states filed an amici curiae brief on Aug. 25, asking the Supreme Court to hear a challenge to a Maryland weapons ban. The brief argues that the ban infringes on Second Amendment rights by prohibiting the sale, transfer and possession of a class of firearms that are in common use for lawful purposes.

“It is the duty of the office of the Attorney General to uphold and defend the rights and liberties of our citizens under both the U.S. and Georgia Constitutions,” Carr said in a statement. “The Second Amendment gives law-abiding citizens the right to not only keep, but also to bear arms, and we joined this brief because the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals inappropriately adopted an unduly restrictive view of the Second Amendment.”

The brief filed said the question at hand is “whether the Fourth Circuit inappropriately limited the scope of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms by upholding a ban on certain firearms typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes like self-defense, based merely on a finding that those firearms would be most useful in military service.”

The brief points to the 2008 District of Columbia et al. v Heller case as central to making the coalition’s case that clarity is needed on the issue. The arguments are that the Fourth Circuit’s novel Second Amendment test conflicts with the standard set in Heller and would allow bans of firearms commonly used for self-defense, the most recent case presents a means for the Supreme Court to resolve confusion in the lower courts about the appropriate scope of Heller and that similar decisions threaten the laws and policy preferences of certain states.

“In District of Columbia v. Heller, this Court described individual self-defense as ‘the central component’ of the right to bear arms, and thus held that the Second Amendment protects an ‘individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation,’” the brief said.

Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming also support the friend-of-the-court brief.

“(These states) have an interest in protecting the fundamental rights secured for their citizens by the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, including the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms,” the brief said. “Amici also have an interest in ensuring that their individual state-level enactments safeguarding such rights are protected from pre-emption by federal laws that would violate the Second Amendment.”

Records available from the Supreme Court show the case was docketed on July 26, several months following the Fourth Circuit’s Feb. 21 decision. In the last two weeks, several amici curiae briefs have been filed by organizations including Pink Pistols, the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America.