If I were to create a hierarchy of rights, the only right I'd consider remotely as important as the right to keep and bear arms would be property rights. I think a man's home is his castle and he should have certain rights there. I also don't think those rights necessarily end at his front doorstep but generally extend to the edges of the property line.

Now, if their actions leave that property line--say, walking around naked in the yard or blasting loud music at 3:00 in the morning--that's different, but otherwise, I have a problem with the government stepping in.

And what someone does on their property is at the heart of why the Heritage Foundation's Amy Swearer says Pennsylvania's gun laws need work.

Pennsylvania’s gun laws need fixing.

No, they’re not “too lax,” and they don’t allow violent criminals to easily buy guns through legitimate channels, as many gun control activists wrongly claim.

Rather, the state’s gun laws allow for gross injustices against peaceable gun owners — injustices that undermine public safety, rather than promote it.

Just ask Vincent Yakaitis.

In February 2023, Yakaitis — then 73 years old — shot and wounded a much younger intruder who charged at him while burglarizing his Port Carbon property. By all accounts, this was a justified use of deadly force by a crime victim against a criminal actor, who now faces a litany of criminal charges.

Yet, more than a year after Yakaitis used his firearm in self-defense, prosecutors decided to pursue criminal charges against him as well — not for shooting the burglar, but for carrying a firearm in public without a license.

The two first-degree misdemeanor charges he faces are no laughing matter, either. Each count carries a potential sentence of up to five years in prison, meaning a conviction would also disqualify him under federal law from ever possessing firearms in the future.

But wait. Why did Yakaitis need a license to carry a firearm on his own property?

It appears that while Yakaitis owned the vacant building in which he defended himself, he didn’t actually live there. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, his “place of abode or fixed place of business,” and this left the door open for prosecutors to charge him over what amounts to little more than a technicality.

And it is little more than a technicality.

I agree. It's an absurdity.

We've talked about this here before, but we can't just let this drift off into the ether, either. Yakaitis may not have been in his home, but he still wasn't in public, either. He was on property he lawfully owned. One shouldn't need a permit to carry a firearm on a property you own.

What's more, there was absolutely no reason to prosecute except to send a message that you cannot carry outside of your actual home without a permit, even on property you own.

A lot of people may have hunting land, for example, that they may own but don't live on. Under this, they cannot carry a firearm on that property without a permit, despite the fact that it is their property.

This is absolutely insane to me, and I agree with Swearer that Pennsylvania needs to address this.

Unfortunately, the legislature isn't like to do anything about it. Anti-gun Democrats control the state House, which means they're unlikely to do any such thing, which is really illustrative of the problem with anti-gunners as a whole. Creating a law that would make actions like what Yakaitis did legal--i.e. carrying a gun on one's property that they don't live in--doesn't do anything to empower criminals or make the public less safe, even under the theory that more guns create more crime.

And yet, they won't touch it.

They should, though.