Supreme Judicial Court upholds Massachusetts requirements for gun permits

In the second of two gun-related rulings today, the Supreme Judicial Court rejected a New Bedford man's effort to have gun-possession charges thrown out on the theory that state laws that require gun permits are now unconstitutional.

As in a case involving gun safety, the state's highest court ruled that the Second Amendment does not apply to individuals in Massachusetts, and that unlike federal courts, Massachusetts courts have never held that a comparable section of the state constitution grants individuals the right to pack heat.

Nathanel DePina was convicted in 2008 of illegal possession of guns and ammunition after state troopers, investigating an apparent shooting, found him running from the scene and, when they stopped him, heard a metal clank on the sidewalk and then picked up the gun he'd apparently attempted to discard.

In his appeal, DePina argued that a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, in which a Washington, DC gun-control law was overturned, eliminates the need to obtain a permit to own a gun in Massachusetts and therefore voids the law under which he was charged. The court disagreed:

The defendant's argument rests on the assumption that the protection of the Second Amendment applies to the States as a matter of substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. For the reasons stated in Commonwealth v. Runyan, we conclude that, based on current Federal law, the Second Amendment does not apply to the States, either through the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of substantive due process or otherwise. Because the Second Amendment does not apply to the States, the defendant's claim that [state gun laws], and the licensing scheme the statute enforces, infringe on his Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms must fail.

The defendant's challenge likewise fails under our Massachusetts Constitution, which recognizes no individual right to keep and bear arms.

The justices also rejected DePina's claim that his conviction should be tossed because it was based in part on a certificate that the object police found was a working gun, which he argued violated his rights under another Supreme Court ruling that defendants have the right to confront the authors of such certificates in court. The court ruled that, unlike with convictions overturned by the Massachusetts Appeals Court, there was enough other evidence related to the gun to find DePina guilty even without the certificate.

Complete ruling.