A judge in New Jersey rules that blind people have Second Amendment rights too.
UPDATE: Clearing out my tabs, it seems I forgot how this story was put together. Now let me do it the right way:
A blind gun collector is in Court defending his Second Amendment rights. It looks like this guy has made the news before, when he won his appeal of his FID denial for being blind back in 1994, and once again in 2004 after they tried to revoke him because of a conviction unrelated to firearms possession (being unruly in a bar). Now they apparently want to revoke him because he was the victim of a burglary while he was in the hospital after shooting himself, and while in the hospital was the victim of a burglary.
You don’t have Second Amendment rights in the Garden State, despite McDonald. The time will soon come to put the smack down on this nonsense. Maybe it would be a wise things for Mr. Hopler to give up his hobby, but that should be his choice, not the states.
Did he even look at the 8″x10″ color glossy photos!?
Next… A drivers license
Article from 1994. Which kind of makes me wonder where that judge is now.
The guy in question was in the news recently fighting a yanking of his FID after a ND event while cleaning. (IIRC he won, with the judge noting that we don’t fire cops who shoot themselves while cleaning firearms).
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/08/judge_to_determine_whether_to.html
Note, incidentally, this guy not only got his FID in 1994, but successfully defended againt a previous attempt to lift in it 2004 for being drunk and disorderly (w/o firearms) and appears likely to win thhis one as well.
In general, this is a pretty weird case for the pro-rights side to have won; not only once but several times. A blind guy who leaves guns laying around the house, was convicted in muni court of unruliness in a bar, etc…
Also note, the prosecutors siezed guns and they want to keep them…
Good for the judge… but did anyone notice the date?
Published: April 3, 1994
Also, either the judges of his county are remarkably pro-gun or this guy has a kick-ass lawyer (or both). I wouldn’t be surprised by either case.
It would be interesting to know how “blind” he is, too. Not that it matters right now; theprosecutors are trying to nail him for “unsafe storage” as a reason to revoke. The only storage law in NJ prohibits leaving unsupervised,loaded forearms within easy access of a minor under 14.
If he is truly blind (and not just in need of Coke bottles like mine), then I think I might draw the line at a concealed carry permit.
I believe it’s a license to own, not carry. I assume that in NJ carry involves either a separate license or a specific endorsement on the ownership license.
Either way, I wouldn’t deny him the right to carry – though depending on how blind he is there is a strong argument that almost any use or attempted use of any of his firearms would constitute criminally reckless endangerment.
It’s complicated – it’s a license to purchase longarms (which also theoretically grants the ability to carry an unloaded longarm) and is required to purchase handgun ammo from an FFL in-state. However, I believe revocation of an FID makes you a prohibited person in NJ.
It is decidedly NOT a carry permit – that’s a separate (almost unobtainable) permit.
For each handgun, he had to get a separate permit to purchase, which requires the same check as getting the FID in the first place (though the fingerprinting may be waived if it has been less than a certain amount of time since the last application for a Permit to Purchase or FID).
Both the FID and the Permit to Purchase are nominally shall-issue within 30 days, though in practice it can take anywhere from 6 weeks to over a year to actually obtain, and the judicial system in NJ has consistently held the 30-day limit to not start ticking until the BG check is completed…