Overturn of Montana Man's Conviction Illustrates Issue With Gun-Free School Zones

The Bruen decision left the door open on "sensitive places" that can be gun-free zones. Places like courthouses, for example.

For a lot of people, schools should definitely be on that list. I'm not so sure, but I can accept that some people disagree with me. They have a right to be wrong, after all, especially since we know that the gun-free zone thing doesn't seem to keep bad people from carrying them onto the campus anyway.

But a case in Montana, where a man's conviction was just overturned, highlights one major issue with gun-free school zones.

See, the issue isn't just the schools, but a perimeter around the schools, and that's what got him arrested.

A man who was convicted in federal court of firearms violations after menacing neighbors and an elementary school in Billings by carrying guns and patrolling the neighborhood has had his conviction overturned in a split decision by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a ruling earlier this week, the panel of three appellate judges said that Gabriel Metcalf’s conviction should be overturned because he offered a plausible interpretation and understanding of federal gun law, even while acknowledging that federal district court judge Susan Watters had a more straightforward and traditional definition of the law.

The majority opinion, written by Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a former Montana Solicitor General, noted that Metcalf appears to be the only person to test whether Montana’s open carry gun law complied with the federal Gun-Free School Zones Act. In his appeal, Metcalf also raised concerns that his conviction also violated his Second Amendment rights, but the appellate court stopped short of deciding that issue, ruling instead that Metcalf’s interpretation of the law was plausible, and therefore he could not have known he was violating federal law.

Judge Mary M. Schroeder issued a dissenting opinion in the case, saying that VanDyke and Judge John B. Owens had reached their conclusion “by means of a tortured application” of judicial principles, even while acknowledging that Watters had the better and more traditional interpretation of state and federal law.

At the heart of the issue, at least in the case itself, is that Montana's permitless carry law basically says that everyone who isn't expressly forbidden from carrying a gun is considered licensed, and the federal law says people with licenses can carry in the buffer area around a school. The Biden administration argued that no, the licensing had to be explicit--something the law doesn't seem to actually state, for the record--and so he was in violation of federal law.

Metcalf's defense is that he literally had no reason to believe any such thing, which is fair.

However, a bigger issue is the existence of this area outside of the school grounds themselves.

See, the federal law doesn't account for permitless carry as most states have it, nor does it account for things like reciprocity. You have to be licensed in that state in order to just walk past a school on the sidewalk, which is a problem.

This is something most people are going to be unaware of when traveling, for one thing, just as they're not going to be aware of where all the schools in a given city might be. Just following Google Maps could land you a felony charge, simply because Google didn't know you needed to be so many feet away from a school because you're lawfully carrying a firearm.

It's ridiculous.

If we're going to insist that schools should be gun-free zones for law-abiding adults, can't we at least agree that if someone intends anything malicious, stretching that zone out however many feet or isn't going to actually stop them any better than the sign on the door will? Can't we also agree that it's ridiculous that people otherwise obeying the law, going about their day, might end up with a felony charge because they set foot outside of their house with a gun on their person, simply because they live in a constitutional carry state and live too close to a school?

Of course we can't, because some people are so vehemently hoplophobic that they can't accept anyone with a gun not being evil.

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