The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) is appealing a ruling by a Texas judge that the state’s concealed carry ban at bars, racetracks, and sporting events is constitutional under the Second Amendment.
In the case Ziegenfuss v. Martin, FPC and three individual plaintiffs brought a facial challenge under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments against Texas Department of Public Safety Director Freeman Martin, arguing that the state’s location-based bans violate the right to bear arms for immediate self-defense in public.
However, U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman ruled that Texas can continue banning the carry of firearms at racetracks, businesses that derive 51 percent or more of their income from on-premises alcohol sales, and at premises where high school, collegiate, professional, or interscholastic sporting events are taking place.
“The court finds that the Firearms Prohibitions regulate conduct that falls within the plain text of the Second Amendment,” the ruling stated. “Further, Amici have demonstrated that Texas’s law is sufficiently analogous to historical laws prohibiting the carry of firearms in sensitive places to justify Texas’s Firearms Prohibitions.”
Concerning bars that derive more than half of their income from alcoholic drink sales, the ruling stated: “Places are not sensitive ‘simply because they are crowded,’ even though ‘people sometimes concentrate in sensitive places.’ But here, although not yet explicitly labeled by the Court as ‘sensitive places,’ the historical record shows that in practice these settings were treated as sensitive places where laws forbade the carrying of firearms. So, likewise, contemporary businesses that predominantly profit from alcohol sales, such as bars, are also sensitive places.”
The court used very similar reasoning to determine that the ban on carrying at sporting events is also constitutional under the Second Amendment.
“While professional sports stadiums and racetracks are not sensitive places just because they are crowded, the American legal tradition has long-maintained laws regulating Second Amendment liberties in crowded places of social amusement,” the ruling stated. “And the historical evidence shows that places of social amusement were treated as sensitive places. Because of the similarity between those settings and professional sports stadiums and racetracks, the Texas statutes lawfully treat them as sensitive places as they do interscholastic events, bars and restaurants.”
In announcing its decision to appeal, the FPC said in a strongly worded news release that the judge’s ruling was flatly wrong.
“Judge Pittman’s misguided opinion upholding Texas’s carry ban across wide swaths of public life—including at sporting events—isn’t even in the same ballpark as the Constitution,” FPC wrote in the release. “His decision is nothing but foul balls, so we’ve directed our attorneys to appeal this case to the Fifth Circuit without delay. We’re confident the law and the Supreme Court’s binding precedent will prevail—and this insane ruling will be reversed.”
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