“We have reviewed Maryland gun laws and concluded none of them are so stringent as to violate the Second Amendment.” Say sayeth Raquel Guillory, PR flack for Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler. Under Maryland law, a resident may receive a handgun permit if he or she “Has, based on the results of investigation, a good and substantial reason to carry a handgun, including a finding that the permit is necessary as a reasonable precaution against apprehended danger.” That’s not good enough for the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), who’ve filed a lawsuit against MD and its licensing officers for denying Raymond Woollard a handgun permit. The citizen journalists at examiner.com provide the 411 on Mr. Woollard’s case . . .
Raymond Woollard is a Maryland resident whose home was literally invaded by a man on Christmas Eve 2002 as the Woollard family gathered to celebrate the holiday. Woollard grabbed a shotgun, but the thug decided to fight . . .
While they were grapping over the gun, Woollard’s son grabbed another gun and held the suspect, waiting for the police to arrive . . .
According to court documents, it took the police ‘approximately 2.5 hours to arrive’ because the local police could not decide in which county Woollard’s home was located. Adding insult to injury, when this guy went to trial, he was sentenced to three years of probation. He subsequently was arrested for assaulting a police officer, and burglarizing another home. Those convictions put him behind bars, but not for long.
Woollard, according to the lawsuit, was issued a permit to carry a handgun. He renewed that permit in 2005, soon after the burglar was released from prison. That burglar now lives about three miles from Woollard. When he applied for a second renewal in early 2009, Woollard was advised that his application was “incomplete.” The reason? “Evidence is needed to support apprehended fear (i.e. – copies of police reports for assaults, threats, harassments, stalking).”
The letter from MD to Woollard stated that a pistol wouldn’t constitute “a reasonable precaution against apprehended danger.”
It seems that the Board denied Woollard’s application on a technicality, rather than the [known to them] basis of his request. The SAF puts it this way: “We are supporting Mr. Woollard in this action because constitutional rights trump bureaucratic whims.
Still, Woolard must have a case: the lawyer handling the action is none other than Alan Gura; the brief who successfully argued both Heller and McDonald in the Supreme Court.
As it has in New York, the SAF is taking MD’s licensing authority and its officers to court to strike down their “may issue” bias against concealed carry permits. Specifically, Secretary and Superintendent of the Maryland State Police Terrence B. Sheridan, and Maryland Handgun Permit Review Board members Denis Gallagher, Seymour Goldstein and Charles M. Thomas, Jr.
Not to Mr. Gura: how much for RI?
