Atlanta, GA – A federal judge has upheld the Georgia law banning weapons in churches, mosques and synagogues, saying gun rights advocates had not shown that carrying a firearm is necessary to practicing any religion.
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U.S. District Judge Ashley Royal dismissed a lawsuit filed by the gun rights organization GeorgiaCarry.org and the minister at the Baptist Tabernacle of Thomaston. Royal wrote that Georgia law did not violate the First Amendment right to freedom of religion or the Second Amendment guarantee of a right to bear arms.
Also did a north Georgia legislator filed a bill to remove the restriction on guns in places of worship. House Bill 54, filed by Rep. Bobby Franklin, R-Marietta, eliminates places of worship from the list of prohibited places.
John Monroe, the attorney who filed the suit, said no decision has been made about appealing Royal’s decision or dropping the issue.
The suit filed last summer challenged a 2010 change to state law that removed the prohibition of guns at “public gatherings” and replaced it with a list of specific places – places of worship, government buildings, courthouses, jails and prisons, state mental hospitals, nuclear power plants, bars without the owner’s permission and polling places.
The suit was brought just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 last June that the Second Amendment guaranteed a person the right to have a gun in the home for protection. The justices left open to state and local governments as to where the lines could be drawn beyond that.
The suit called the handgun “the quintessential self-defense weapon in the United States.” Former GeorgiaCarry.org president Ed Stone and other worshipers argued that they should be able to arm themselves “for the protection of their families and themselves” without fear of arrest and prosecution on a misdemeanor charge. The Rev. Jonathan Wilkins, also a plaintiff, said he wanted to have a gun for his protection while working in his office at the Baptist Tabernacle. Royal wrote that the Thomaston church had not claimed “its members’ religious beliefs require that any member carry a firearm into the Tabernacle, whether during worship services or otherwise.”
Instead the church claimed members’ efforts to practice their faith had been “impermissibly burdened.”
Stone wrote in a filing, however, “In very large part, my motivation to carry a firearm as a matter of habit derives from one of my Lord’s last recorded statements at the ‘last supper,’ that ‘whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one … I believe that this injunction requires me to obtain, keep and carry a firearm wherever I happen to be.”
Royal wrote worshipers were free to leave their guns in the car or they could secure or temporarily surrender their weapons with security or management at door as they go inside to worship.
In the case of the minister, Royal wrote Wilkins could have a gun in his church office if he had permission from the Tabernacle’s management. “If management or security personnel at the Tabernacle, which presumably includes Wilkins as CEO, did not grant him permission to secure or store a firearm in his office, then that would be at their discretion,” Royal wrote.
The judge goes on to write that the only risk of criminal sanction is if “they refuse to comply with the law’s mandates about carrying firearms in places of worship. “Complying with the law’s requirements does not prohibit them from attending worship services nor does it place an ‘unmistakable’ pressure on them ‘to forgo religious precepts.’”
This ruling defies logic. How can a person feel safe and concentrate on their prayers if they are concerned with being attacked, and helplessly not being able to respond adequately to the threat.
This is good. Without this decision, a terrorist could legally carry an AK-47 into a synagogue and nobody could stop him until after he starts firing!
According to halacha, it is forbidden to bring weapons into a bait knesset.
Kvetcher could you please post the source of the halacha. Thanks.
Cont’d
It’s not that the Government cannot proscribe some religious practices. The Government has occasionally done so, as in the case of prohibiting practitioners of some Native American religions from using peyote, jimson weed or certain other hallucinogenic substances. While the Government may have agreed that the use of halucinogenics was, in fact part of the traditional ritual, the Government claimed in these cases that there was an “overriding public interest” in controlling hallucinogenic substances.
If the judge in this case had made the same argument, one could agree or disagree but such a ruling would be within his purview. But to rule, as he did, that carrying a firearm is not necessary for the practice of religion crosses the line of Government ruling on the religious practice itself. I cannot see how this ruling will not be reversed on appeal
The government cannot regulate the interior of a house of worship any differently from the regulation of any other place of public assembly. The ruling will be overturned on appeal.
It was a horrifying experience in the 1990’s. I arrived at Rabbi Heinemann’s Aguda in Baltimore before the 8:30 Shabbos morning minyan. Standing inside the front door was a well-dressed, 30-ish Black fellow who was carrying a briefcase. He was speaking loudly with some of the shul members. He was demanding to speak with “the rabbi.” The rabbi had not yet arrived for the minyan and someone, hoping that the fellow would just go away, mentioned that the rabbi was not present . The man became increasingly loud and belligerent.
When the davening started, the fellow charged from the hallway into the Bais Medrash. He walked quickly to the bimah b’emtza. While the davening continued, he stood in the middle of the bimah and started to preach the message of his prophet Mohammad. He became increasingly aggravated as he realized that no congregant was paying attention to his “important message.” The congregants were all engrossed in their prayers. They were all reading from their prayerbooks.
After about two minutes of ranting, he stopped, bent down and opened up the briefcase that he had placed on the bimah bench. My heart stopped when I realized
My heart stopped when I realized that he could be reaching for an automatic weapon, hand grenade, etc., chas v’shalom. Before we could respond, he whipped out a Koran and started reading loudly some relevant passage. After about another minute, he gave up in frustration and disgust and stormed out.
I heard later that the police told us he was a deranged person and that they had instructed him not to enter our shul again. Obviously, no religious assembly or group of people should be subject to this type of disruption. Had the fellow been evil and violent in addition to being deranged, the results might have been tragic. Several years ago, someone wrote a book advocating an armed citizenry. I recall its chilling title, Call 911 and Die.
No deranged or evil-intentioned person should assume that synagogues are places where the only heat is provided by the intensity of Torah u’Tefila. HaMaven Yaven. By the way, a firearm is not muktzeh if one is willing to use it given the appropriate circumstance. Yes, we have an eruv in Baltimore.
raykaufm,
First of all I am waiting for you to concede on the bet that you made in post # 6. I believe I won the bet based on my posts in posts 11, 12 an 14.
Secondly, there is an underlying public policy issue at stake here. The state of Georgia has an interest in maintaining law and order in public places whether publicly or privately owned. A synagogue, although the property is likely owned by a private individual, is a public place. The federal court was merely upholding a state’s right to regulate in this field.
Additionally, the only reason the federal court got involved in the issue of whether or not carrying a gun inhibits proper practice of one’s religion is because that is what the plaintiffs in this case were claiming.