BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation has won a huge victory for the right to bear arms outside the home, with a ruling in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that declares the right to self-defense is “broader than the right to have a gun in one’s home.”
The case of Moore v. Madigan, with Judge Richard Posner writing for the majority, gives the Illinois legislature 180 days to “craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment…on the carrying of guns in public.”
“We are very happy with Judge Posner’s majority opinion,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “This is a victory for Illinois citizens who have been long denied a right recognized in the other 49 states; to have the means necessary for self-defense outside the home.
“In the broader sense,” he added, “this ruling affirms that the right to keep and bear arms, itself, extends beyond the boundary of one’s front door. This is a huge victory for the Second Amendment.”
“The Second Amendment,” Judge Posner writes, “states in its entirety that ‘a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’ The right to ‘bear’ as distinct from the right to ‘keep’ arms is unlikely to refer to the home. To speak of ‘bearing’ arms within one’s home would at all times have been an awkward usage. A right to bear arms thus implies a right to carry a loaded gun outside the home.”
Later, Judge Posner adds, “To confine the right to be armed to the home is to divorce the Second Amendment from the right of self-defense described in Heller and McDonald.”
“That the court will give Illinois lawmakers six months to craft a law allowing carry outside the home recognizes that the right to bear arms means what it says,” Gottlieb concluded. “The ball is now in the Legislature’s court, and we eagerly wait to see how well they can live up to their responsibility.”