Court: Massachusetts murderers can't claim Second Amendment rights if they never applied for a gun permit

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today a Mattapan man will spend the rest of his life in prison for shooting a rival to death in 2002.

Isaac Wallace had appealed his first-degree murder conviction in part on the argument that the state's current gun-permit regulations violate a 2008 Supreme Court decision limiting gun control, and that his conviction violated his Second Amendment right to carry a gun for self protection.

Wallace argued that the man he shot at Washington and Brinsley street after a pot-buying excursion in Uphams Corner had lifted up his shirt as if he were about to grab a gun and that he had no choice but to plug him four times.

In his brief, Wallace's attorney, David Mirsky, argued Massachusets gun-permit laws are "impermissible prior restraint upon Second Amendment rights by placing restrictions upon the possession of a firearm without providing statutory protections of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms."

But for the second time this year, the state's highest court rejected this self-defense argument. The court, which has bristled at recent Supreme Court decisions on the Second Amendment, ruled Wallace didn't even have the right to bring up the Second Amendment because of those gun-permit regulations:

[T]he defendant has not asserted or made any showing that he applied for a license under G.L. c. 140, § 131, to carry a firearm and was denied ... [W]e conclude that he may not challenge his conviction of carrying a firearm without a license, in violation of G.L. c. 269, § 10 (a), under the Second or Fourteenth Amendments.

Wallace was ineligible for a gun permit because of a prior felony conviction.

The court also rejected Wallace's other claim that his trial lawyer was incompetent.

• Complete ruling, Commonwealth v. Isaac Wallace
• Wallace's brief on why his verdict should be overturned
• Response by the Suffolk County District Attorney's office