PA Bill Number: HR541
Title: Recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
Description: A Resolution recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
Last Action:
Last Action Date: Sep 27, 2024
D.C.'s Concealed-Carry Law To Face Big Test In Federal Court Next Month :: 08/25/2016
Gun-rights advocates say D.C.'s concealed-carry permit standard is unconstitutionally restrictive.
Two legal challenges to D.C.'s restrictive concealed-carry law will be heard by a federal three-judge panel next month, pushing the fight over how far the city can go in restricting who can carry a concealed handgun further up the judicial process.
On Sept. 20, judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, Thomas B. Griffith and Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear the two cases, Wrenn v. D.C. and Grace v. D.C., in which residents challenged the city's requirement that anyone who wants to carry a concealed handgun show a "good reason" — read: a specific threat to their personal safety — in order to get a permit.
Both Brian Wrenn and Matthew Grace, along with other gun-rights advocates and various national gun groups, have argued that the standard is unconstitutionally restrictive, and that the Second Amendment protects their right to carry a gun outside just as it does within their homes.
In May, a federal judge largely agreed with Grace, ordering D.C. to stop enforcing the good-reason provision. He later stayed the ruling, pending an appeal from the city. The Wrenn case has followed a more tortured path: One federal judge sided with him last year, but was later removed from the case and it was assigned to another judge.
The issue of who can carry a concealed handgun — and where they can carry it — also has been fought out in the courts in California. In June, an 11-judge panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld San Diego's concealed-carry law, which contains the same good-reason provision as D.C.'s.
Officials in San Diego, D.C. and other jurisdictions with good-reason laws — including Maryland — say that while the Second Amendment may protect an individual right to own a gun, it doesn't necessarily protect the right of the owner to carry the gun outside of the home. In D.C.'s case, city officials have also argued that allowing more people to carry concealed handguns could pose a threat to the many dignitaries who work in the city.
Should the Court of Appeals in D.C. decide differently than the court in California, it could set the issue up for consideration in the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2008, the Supreme Court tossed out D.C.'s complete ban on handgun ownership, and ruled for the first time that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to own a gun, instead of as part of a militia. But that ruling — Heller v. D.C. — left vague how far localities can go in restricting the possession and carrying of handguns.
D.C. has allowed residents to apply for concealed-carry permits since late 2014, after a federal judge tossed out the city's ban on carrying handguns in public. Since then, fewer than 100 of the permits have been granted, and many more have been denied due to the good-reason provision.
https://wamu.org/news/16/08/24/dcs_concealed_carry_law_to_face_big_test_in_court_next_month
