imported post
wewd wrote:
Remember that the 1,000 feet start from the property line and radiate out from there, with the zone taking the general shape of the property. It is not like some of the already existing Google Maps tools which draw a 1,000 foot radius from the center of the property in a perfect circle. Google Maps and even Google Earth do not yet have the capability to generate an accurate map of every school's property lines.
What's even worse is that the icons for the schools in Google Maps merely mark where their street address is, and if you drew a 1,000 foot circle from this position, it would not even cover the entirety of the school property itself in many cases. None of these tools and apps can be relied upon to keep you out of a school zone. You would have to draw a radius of around half a mile to give yourself enough of a buffer to stay away from most zones and even then you could not completely rely upon it.
The upside to all of this is when it comes time to properly challenge the law in the courts, it can be shown just how vague the boundaries are and how nearly impossible it is for anyone to reasonably stay out of the zones while lawfully exercising their right to carry a firearm.
I think you've correctly identified the biggest flaw in this unconstitutional law. It not only disenfranchises all who live, work, or have the need (and the right) to traverse these zones, but it is incumbent on the citizen to obtain the knowledge of when a violation is imminent or occurring, and its not a reasonable burden.
Although, notice there is an "out" for this law:
There is a doctrine that "ignorance of the law" is no excuse, but then there is this additional doctrine of laws that are nearly impossible to comply with being unreasonable and thus grossly unfair.
The law does have some verbiage that would seem to require one component of the crime is that the subject "knows" or "should reasonably know" the conditions for the crime exist. However, in the Theseus case, the judge not only ignored this part of construction but refused to admit testimony to that effect to be heard by the jury.
In my opinion, and I am not a lawyer, there are several major constitutional issues with this unfair and unjust law:
a) impossible for ordinary person to comply with as establishing the boundaries of school property requires information that is extremely difficult to ascertain or has a prohibitively expensive associated cost. (GIS mapping application, GIS mapping expertise, computer, etc). It can be argued this is too much of a burden. It would be as if cars lacked speedometers, and you had to comply with the speed limit but you had to divine the limit in any given place not from a signpost on the roadside, but a map provided not by the government, but by third parties, and determine your own speed by visual estimation or "seat of the pants" sensations, rather than by actual measurement. It's not possible for a human being to maintain in his head the contours produced by the 1000 foot radii of an irregularly shaped area of unknown size and dimensions. Imagine if you were driving down the road and the sign said "Speed limit - square root of 3025".
b) State has no vested interest in prohibiting OC in school zone, particularly due to the arbitrary construction of the zone itself. The law's legislative purporse arose not from protection of the public from a specific danger (school shootings clearly are not affected by this law) but from the desire of district's attorneys to have easier and more plentiful opportunities to arrest and convict habitual drug dealers on non-drug felony charges in urban/inner city areas. This is revealed in a careful analysis of the genesis of GFSZs, which began at the federal level. They had to use some flimsy commerce clause to even get it passed, because it was clearly not under the purview of Congress. When the states picked it up, they hit on the idea of using it in their War on Some Drugs in the same manner, with the same kind of tortured logic. Kind of like the income tax being the prosecution's way to nail Al Capone. His tax evasion wasn't hurting the community, but there WAS a law against it, and they had nothing else to use.
In the case of persecuting OC'ers using GFSZs, what is the vested interest of the State? It isn't to clean up the streets from habitual drug dealers and gang bangers. It is a violation incidental to no other crime. In the case of not allowing guns inside government buildings, well that is the government's building and theirs to make rules for as they see fit, just as any private business can create conditions of entry for their buildings. And it serves the additional purpose that they think it keeps their butts out of harm's way, despite the fact that an actual Revolution isn't going to stop and check the guns at the door before storming the building. A little wishful thinking never hurt anyone, so we'll let that one go. So the locations determined to meet the conditions for the crime to occur are rather than specific, arbitrary. Since they are not actually specified, except in generalities which are impossible to determine, they can't possibly serve a specific Interest. If the state did in fact have some vested interest in the actual GFSZ areas created by the statute, wouldn't it be obvious in some other manifestation as well? Like for example, when you have a "School Zone" for traffic purposes, you will find it in many sections of the Vehicle Code. There are increased fines, there are changes in the speed limit, there are powers and controls exercised for a specific purpose, all to decrease the vehicular threat to juvenile pedestrian traffic that is inherent immediately in and around the school. Like a crosswalk and the special penalties created by the statute for interfering or disobeying with a "crossing guard".
Nothing similar for GFSZs. Because there exists no common, public serving purpose that requires arbitrary designation of all points within 1000 feet radii from every boundary line of a property.
c) it might violate the Equal Protection clause. Not only does it treat inequally two citizens doing the same thing (in the case of OC'ing in a GFSZ, that would be the act of carrying a firearm), if you have both an OC'er with no CCW and one with. Two citizens, engaged in same act, one is subject to this law and one is not. Why? There is no substantive difference or requirement between them, and in fact, the laws that provide the OC exemption specifically use the very same verbiage used as an exclusion to qualification for a CCW (not prohibited from owning a firearm, not convicted of certain offenses, must be RO of the firearm to be carried, etc).
I think the Wisconsin case will provide fodder for appellate reversal of Theseus' conviction, but we'll have to see.
