To everyone in Connecticut who reads the posts by Charles Nichols,
Mr. Nichols appears to believe argue and litigate that the Second Amendment right to BARE arms was written specifically to protect OPEN CARRY.
For those that know me here in Connecticut, rest assured, I have and do support OPEN CARRY by those with valid permits to do so.
Like it or not, the US Supreme court has held that Open Carry is the right guaranteed by the Constitution and that concealed carry can be banned. Moreover, according to SCOTUS, concealed carry is immoral and Open Carry is noble. Don't like it? Write a letter.
The Heller decision spelled it out for you:
"[A] right to carry arms openly: "This is the right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, and which is calculated to incite men to a manly and noble defence of themselves, if necessary, and of their country, without any tendency to secret advantages and unmanly assassinations.""
District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 - Supreme Court (2008) at 2809.
"Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues."
District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 - Supreme Court (2008) at 2816.
In the two and a half years I have been litigating my Open Carry lawsuit I have always argued that the Supreme Court meant exactly what it said, nothing more and nothing less. Even YOUR own lawyer says that YOU are going to lose. Here is the
link to the video.
YOU will then file a cert petition and it will be denied just as every concealed carry cert petition has been denied. If SCOTUS were to grant a concealed carry cert petition it would have granted it for the Drake case out of New Jersey, a state which is far, far more restrictive than California.
Courts are bound by prior precedent. Only the US Supreme Court can reverse itself and this Court has made it clear that it is not going to reverse itself on the question of concealed carry.
As for your insistence that someone must have a permit, there is absolutely no US Supreme Court precedent which has held that an individual, acting alone and outside of a group context, can be required to have a permit to exercise a fundamental right. Both YOU and the SAF have been, and are to this day, arguing that an individual can be denied his fundamental, enumerated Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms absent a government issued permission slip.
A permit requirement destroys the right.
A permit converts a right into a privilege, one that the government can take away as easily as taking away the permit.
YOU Ed Peruta, and your fellow travelers, present far more of a danger to the Second Amendment than the Brady bunch ever will.
Charles Nichols – President of California Right To Carry
http://CaliforniaRightToCarry.org