Judges Gone Wild

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This case turns on an idiotic interpretation of the statute which these three judges made, I suspect, because the judges don’t agree with the notion of individual citizens having a right of self-defense and therefore choosing to sabotage that right by intentionally being obtuse.

The case hinges on the definition of “carry” as in “carry a pistol in a public place.”  What does that phrase mean?  The court decided “carry” was not defined the same as the section of the statute right before this one, but instead was intended to have an entirely different definition in the broadest general sense to mean “convey or transport,” the same as you’d “carry” a bag of groceries from the car to the house.  Can anyone imagine them being as cautious, as restrained, as obsequious to Webster’s Dictionary, when deciding a gay rights or abortion case?

Everybody knows the way you carry a gun in the car when driving from your house to the shooting range is to unload the gun, put the gun in a case, put the case in the trunk, and drive to the range.  When you get there, you park, take the gun case out of the trunk and carry the gun case into the range.  That is the ordinary, normal, and perfectly acceptable way to transport a firearm.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re stone-cold sober or not: the procedure is the same.

Yes, technically, you have “conveyed or transported” a gun in a public place, and yes, technically, you did it with your hands so the gun is “on or about your person,” but until this case was decided, nobody would have believed you were “carrying a gun” within the meaning of the Permit to Carry statute. And it’s even dumber to believe there’s a distinction between carrying a pistol in this manner versus carrying a rifle or shotgun in this manner.

This ruling is idiotic.  The Permit to Carry statute was intended to make it easier for honest citizens to carry a loaded gun in public, typically in a holster.  Everybody knows that – it was endlessly debated; enacted and struck down and enacted again; and it’s been working just fine since it was adopted.  I suspect these judges simply don’t like the law.

Note well: this is a City of St. Paul case meaning the liberal Democrats running this city are ones pushing the judges to tighten and narrow and undermine the law statewide, using a pathetic excuse for legal reasoning.  Now imagine what they’ll do to you if you are forced to shoot somebody.

Joe Doakes

If the City of Saint Paul (and Minneapolis) can’t repeal the Pre-Emption Statute, they’ll undermine it in court.

3 thoughts on “Judges Gone Wild

  1. That’s pretty bad, as 624.7142 subd. 5. clearly states that “carry” is about a carry permit, not the dictionary definition. Not smart to go to the range while drunk, but if the court’s definition of “carry” stands, then we have the strange idea that a person who owns a pistol without a carry permit may not even carry it in this manner while sober.

    Hope a higher court slaps the lower court into next week, leading to their debenching and disbarring, as they’ve put a guy in jail for what federal law protects. Oops.

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