By AWR Hawkins, Ph.D., Conservative Writer via The Townhall

This is what U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg was getting at in his  March 6 ruling against Maryland’s bald infringement of the Second Amendment.  That ruling contains the following sentences:

Those who drafted and ratified the Second Amendment surely knew that the  right they were enshrining carried a risk of misuse, and states have  considerable latitude to channel the exercise of the right in ways that will  minimize that risk. States may not, however, seek to reduce the danger by means  of widespread curtailment of the right itself.

Until Legg’s ruling came down, Maryland had been awarding concealed carry  permits only to citizens who could prove they needed to carry a gun for personal  safety (i.e., they had to demonstrate that their lives would be in jeopardy if  they didn’t have a weapon in their possession). This requirement to demonstrate  justification for a concealed carry permit was contained in the state’s “good  and substantial reason” clause.

However, Legg wisely recognized that such a requirement turned the Second  Amendment on its head, and basically placed Marylanders in the position of  having to convince their government to grant them the right to keep and bear  arms, one citizen at a time. Wrote Legg: “A citizen may not be required to offer  a ‘good and substantial reason’ why he should be permitted to exercise his  rights. The right’s existence is all the reason he needs.”

I do not attempt hyperbole by saying that our Founding Fathers would cheer Legg’s ruling with  enthusiasm, were they here to read it. For their purpose in adding the Bill of  Rights to the Constitution was to call attention to a body of rights which the  government could did not give and was prohibited from trying to take away. These  rights were risky — and they remain so — but they were ours because our  Creator endowed us with them, so the risk was par for the course.

With his ruling, Legg has called attention to the enduring nature of these of  rights, and has reminded Maryland officials that the very existence of the right  to keep and bears arms is sufficient justification for keeping and bearing  them.

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