BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco supporting the defendant in a Montana case which challenges the federal gun-free school zones law. The case is known as United States of America v. Gabriel Cowan Metcalf.
SAF is joined by the California Rifle & Pistol Association, Second Amendment Law Center, Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, Second Amendment Defense and Education Coalition and Federal Firearms Licensees of Illinois. They are represented by attorneys C.D. Michel, Joshua Robert Dale and Konstadinos T. Moros at Michel & Associates of Long Beach, Calif.
Metcalf lives in Billings, across the street from an elementary school. Local police were notified he was carrying a firearm while walking in his yard, and in the neighborhood. He told officers he was patrolling the neighborhood to protect himself and his mother from a stalker against whom she had a protection order. Montana law does not prohibit the carrying of firearms in proximity to a school.
“The Metcalf case is a textbook example of what is wrong with the ‘gun-free school zones’ act,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The law was written as a solution to school shootings, but in the process, it effectively disarms and legally jeopardizes law-abiding citizens who live within a picked-out-of-the-hat 1,000-foot perimeter, or those who simply travel through such areas in the course of their daily business. Pick any rural community in the country and you will find schools within close proximity of business districts, supermarkets and gas stations; places visited daily by legally-armed, peaceable citizens.”
“As we explain in our brief, all overbearing ‘sensitive place’ restrictions are an affront to the Second Amendment,” noted SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut, “and buffer zone laws are in their own special category because they can lead to accidental violations. Overlapping school zones can make it literally impossible for people to legally carry firearms, and this is exactly the situation in Billings, and similar communities all over the country. People living in, or moving through these communities can be charged and prosecuted, permanently costing them their Second Amendment rights. Such restrictions clearly make the law unconstitutional.”
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