Massachusetts Cross Border Carry Case Receives New Support

As of August 19, 2024, five amicus briefs in favor of the defendant have been filed in the seminal interstate carry case of Commonwealth v Donnel. Arguments will be heard before the Massachusetts Supreme Court on September 9, 2024.

On June 19, 2024, this correspondent noted only one amicus (friend of the court) brief had been filed in favor of the defendant, Dean F. Donnell, Jr. Donnell, a New Hampshire resident, was arrested in Massachusetts for carrying a firearm without a Massachusetts license. The district court’s opinion found the law requiring a license for law-abiding people from other states who could legally carry in their own state to be facially (obvious on its face) unconstitutional. Four other amicus briefs have been submitted by August 19.

One of those briefs was submitted by several organizations acting together to defend the Constitutional rights to arms and self-defense. Those organizations were the California Rifle and Pistol Association, Second Amendment Law Center, Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners of California, Gun Owners Association, Operation Blazing Sword – Pink Pistols, Second Amendment Defense and Education Coalition,  and Federal Firearms Licensees of Illinois.

The brief was submitted by Jason A. Guida. It is a well-written and well-argued brief. The brief is 39 pages long. Here is the summary of the argument. From the brief:

This case is simple. There is no historical tradition supporting a requirement that peaceable nonresidents already permitted to carry in their home states submit to a burdensome process to obtain a Massachusetts license to carry (“CCW”) if they wish to exercise their Second Amendment rights while visiting or passing through Massachusetts.₂ On the contrary,laws historically exempted travelers from such local restrictions. Americans of earlier eras knew that requiring citizens visiting another state to give up the right to bear arms was untenable.

Particularly interesting was the brief’s point that the plaintiff had misleading the court by chopping off quotes from a statute to give the opposite meaning of what the statute actually stated. The brief also eviscerated the brief submitted by Everytown and the Brady campaign as including suicide data to pump up their argument that people coming from another state make Massachusetts less safe.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) submitted a brief, which is 48 pages long. The arguments are similar to those of the previous brief. It is notable that the NRA included a reference to the infamous Dred Scott case of 1857 on page 30.

The Gun Owners Action League (GOAL) submitted a 49-page brief. An important part of this brief, which this correspondent did not see in the other briefs, was that Donnel was charged under the 2021 law, a “May Issue” law for non-residents. May Issue laws were struck down in the Bruen decision. The GOAL brief also details how the law is “tremendously burdensome to a non-resident”. It is an important distinction. The GOAL brief makes clear arguments to show Donnell has standing for this case.

Jay Edward Simkin has submitted a brief.  The brief is interesting. Edward Simkin submits the brief pro-se, on his own, without counsel. The brief goes into extensive detail about Massachusetts’s history of firearms law. The historical part of the brief is an excellent read in itself. It is 130 pages long, but 90 pages are submitted as an appendix. The actual brief is only 40 pages. Simkin had his out-of-state license in Massachusetts restored by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 2013 after Massachusetts authorities refused to renew it in 2009. Simkin has been a Federal Firearms License in Nashua, New Hampshire, for over 30 years. The brief is well-written and argued.

The case is straightforward if the court follows the guidance set forward by Bruen. No historical laws from the founding era prevented travelers from carrying weapons from one colony to another or, later, from one state to another. The tradition is that travelers are commonly exempted from carry prohibitions.

The excessive burdens imposed by laws requiring a separate carry license for every state are impractical and unreasonable for travelers and violate the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. As a practical matter, although it carries no weight in the Constitutional question, people who are legally allowed to carry in their home state are not a threat to law-abiding people in other states.

About Dean Weingarten:

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.