District Court:Second Amendment Applies Outside Home

Bateman v. Perdue (E.D.N.C. Mar. 29, 2012) involves a North Carolina law that bans “transport[ing] or possess[ing] off [one's] own premises any dangerous weapon” when a state of emergency has been declared.

“Due to natural disasters and severe weather, states of emergency are declared with some frequency in North Carolina.

In 2010, for example, the Governor … issued four statewide emergency declarations and one declaration covering a fifteen-county area ….” There were also at least six local states of emergency declared. All five of these 2010 states of emergency were in response to weather conditions, and the frequency of such declarations may stem from the fact that “[a] state of emergency must be declared in order to qualify for federal disaster assistance.”

The court concluded that:

1. The right to keep and bear arms extends to carrying outside one’s property, for self-defense and for other reasons. The law interferes with the exercise of this right.
2. The law also interferes with the exercise of people’s right to defend themselves in their homes, because it bars people from buying weapons and them transporting them to their homes.
3. The law must therefore be considered under strict scrutiny, because it isn’t just limited to high-risk gun possessors, to particular kinds of guns, or particular manners or times of carrying guns, and because it interferes with getting guns even for home defense (though, as I noted, the court also concluded that carrying guns for defense outside the home is also generally constitutionally protected).
4. The law fails strict scrutiny, because they “excessively intrude upon plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights by effectively banning them … from engaging in conduct that is at the very core of the Second Amendment at a time when the need for self-defense may be at its very greatest” and therefore aren’t narrowly tailored to serve the government’s compelling interest in public safety.-[source]