by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

Battle lines have been drawn in Minnesota, where a district court judge ruled the state’s 15-month-old concealed carry statute unconstitutional, and proponents of the law promised to immediately fight back, with Attorney General Mike Hatch announcing that he would appeal.

Ramsey County District Judge John Finley, siding with anti-gun social service agencies, a religious coalition and the city of Minneapolis, said the law was unconstitutional because the legislation was added as an amendment to a Department of Natural Resources bill. There was, gun rights advocates insist, a “bridge amendment” making the entire process legal.

According to gun rights activists David Gross, an attorney in St. Louis Park, and Joe Olson, who teaches law at Hamline University, the lower court ruling does not have much chance of standing. If it is allowed to stand, scores of other laws would also be placed in legal jeopardy because, in Minnesota, it is commonplace to attach bills to one another for passage.

“It’s only the beginning of the process,” Gross stated. He had just scanned the Finley opinion and noted, “I don’t think it’s particularly defensible.”

He called Finley’s ruling “very much results oriented.”

Olson, considered by many to be largely responsible for the new statute’s language, told Gun Week, “The (state) Supreme Court has been extremely careful to draw a very clear line that says all you need is a minimal connection between one bill and another.”

He estimated that 40 bills passed during this year’s session could easily be declared unconstitutional using Finley’s reasoning, and that’s just this year’s legislation. Take it back a year, Olson said, and there might be an average of 40 to 50 bills passed each session that would also be unconstitutional.

“The legislature does this sort of thing all the time,” he commented.

Plaintiffs in the case want to dismantle the new law, and in the wake of Finley’s decision, some sheriffs are reverting to issuing concealed pistol licenses (CPL) under the discretionary standard of the old law. However, CPLs issued under the new statute will reportedly be honored.

Some sheriffs indicated to The Minneapolis Star Tribune that they prefer the old system under which they could decide who does, and does not, get a license. However, at least one of those lawmen, Goodhue County Sheriff Dean Albers, admitted that nobody who has obtained a CPL under the new law has caused any trouble.

Beltrami County Sheriff Keith Winger told the newspaper that he missed the old days, when he could deny a permit application to someone, not because the applicant was a criminal, “but a nut.”

Hatch reportedly told sheriffs to revert to issuing licenses under the terms of the old law. There was to also be a request to stay Finley’s ruling, and continue issuing CPLs under the new statute until the case is settled by a higher court. That could come fast, because of a 1989 state Supreme Court ruling that allows legislation to stand “so long as a common thread connects it to the general subject of the original bill, even though the connection is a mere filament.”

That filament may exist in the original DNR bill, because it included the “bridge amendment” having to do with firearm safety training for Minnesota hunters.

Finley’s ruling drew criticism from two prominent gun rights leaders. Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), and Joe Waldron, executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms(CCRKBA), both found fault with Finley’s decision.

“This law . . . works,” Gottlieb said. “The plaintiffs know it works, and yet here they are, selfishly pushing a political agenda onto the backs of their fellow Minnesotans. This effort has far less to do with a concern about public safety or private property rights than it does about an anti-gun religious group arrogantly trying to enforce its personal code of conduct on every Minnesota resident.

“Whatever happened to the separation of church and state,” Gottlieb wondered.

“It is difficult to imagine,” Waldron observed, “that Judge Finley’s ruling will stand. That’s up to the court system. However, it seems to me that community leaders would want their neighbors to have a better means of defending themselves and their families than calling 911 and praying that the police arrive in time.”