People and politicians opposed to the Second Amendment like to call for laws that punish a gun owner if his or her gun ever is stolen or used by an unauthorized person. Their preferred implementation is laws requiring trigger locks, secured storage, or keeping weapons and ammunition separate. The stated reasoning is that a gun is such a dangerous, heinous thing that the owner must be held strictly liable for anything bad anyone ever does with it.
It all sounds reasonable until you stop to consider the main reason why most of the people who choose to keep a gun in the house do so: self-defense. A gun with a trigger lock, a gun in a secure storage case, a gun three rooms away from its ammunition — these are guns that cannot protect you or your family. In short, trigger lock provisions have the effect of neutralizing the main advantage to owning a gun.
We in Georgia are lucky to live in a state that accepts firearms ownership and protects those who have used a weapon in self-defense. Many other states deprive citizens of their Second Amendment Civil Right under color of law through things like trigger lock rules. One of the worst states — ironically, considering the important role guns played there in 1775 — is Massachusetts.
Perhaps things are changing. A state trial court has found Massachusetts’ onerous gun storage law unconstitutional. Not only that, the local prosecuting attorney says he agrees with the judge and will not appeal the case!
Barnstable District Court Judge Joan Lynch cited the US Supreme Court’s landmark Heller decision, where the court ruled that the Second Amendment not only protects an individual’s right to possess firearms but that the right also includes that the firearms be available for “the purpose of immediate self-defense.” Judge Lynch wrote “The Massachusetts statute mandating lock boxes or similar devices would frustrate an owner’s ability to immediately access an operable weapon.”
In other words, the judge found trigger lock laws unconstitutional because they do exactly what their proponents say they do: prevent ready access to a gun.
The Heller decision expressly did not ‘incorporate’ the Second Amendment, meaning states are not (yet) bound by the decision the way they are for US Supreme Court cases concerning most of the other Bill Of Rights amendments. Despite that, Judge Lynch has “incorporated” the Second Amendment for the good citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Nothing relieves a gun owner of the moral need to keep their weapons secure from mischief. But it’s nice to see that even anti-gun Massachusetts now recognizes the legitimate purpose of civilian gun ownership.
