https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/homeless-womans-stun-gun-spurs-2nd-amendment-case-27237621

excerpt - Jaime Caetano was beaten so badly by her ex-boyfriend that she ended up in the hospital. So when a friend offered her a stun gun to protect herself, she took it.

Caetano, who is homeless, never had to use it but now finds herself at the center of a contentious Second Amendment case headed to the highest court in Massachusetts.

The Supreme Judicial Court is being asked to decide whether a state law that prohibits private citizens from possessing stun guns infringes on their right to keep and bear arms. In an unusual twist, the court is also being asked to examine whether the Second Amendment right to defend yourself in your own home applies in the case of a homeless person.

Arguments before the court are scheduled Tuesday.

Police found Caetano's stun gun in her purse during a shoplifting investigation at a supermarket in 2011. She told police she needed it to defend herself
against her violent ex-boyfriend, against whom she had obtained multiple restraining orders.

During her trial, Caetano, 32, testified that her ex-boyfriend repeatedly came to her workplace and threatened her. One night, she showed him the
stun gun and he "got scared and left me alone," she said.

She was found guilty of violating the state law that bans private possession of stun guns, devices that deliver an electric shock when pressed against an attacker.

In her appeal, her lawyer, Benjamin Keehn, argues that a stun gun falls within the meaning of "arms" under the Second Amendment. Keehn wrote in a
legal brief that the state's ban "cannot be squared with the fundamental right to keep and bear arms."

He also argues that self-defense outside the home is part of the core right provided by the Second Amendment.

Massachusetts is among only five states that ban stun guns and Tasers for private citizens, said Eugene Volokh, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles,
who has written extensively about Second Amendment issues. The devices are used by law enforcement agencies around the country.

A ban in Michigan was overturned in 2012 after the state appeals court ruled that a total prohibition was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment and the Michigan Constitution.

Volokh said the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for self-defense "necessarily includes the right to do so outside one's home."

(more at above link)

Good for her. Hope she wins.

Very interesting.  Get a good ruling saying that homeless people can carry in public.  Then sue the state for equal protection under the law, to allow everyone to carry in public.

Frontier living is tough.   Was in the 1800's and is today.

This.

Massachusetts, where they require a permit for pepper spray. Fuck be upon that socialist, elitist, and corrupt sewer.

Semper Fi

battered women should be defenseless. Its for the children,.

Yup, this could be a huge victory for gun rights if the court rules the 2nd applies outside the home. The determination of stun guns also being protected would be just a small bonus.

I wonder how much she was shoplifting when she got caught.

 

Places that ban tasers, stun guns, and other non-lethals reveal the true intent of gun control.  

Yeah.  This case opens up a huge number of alternative paths to expanding gun rights and attack bad laws.



 

This opens a whole new level of presidence. If she is OK with a "stun gun" then any new age technology weapon should be covered under the 2A including future weapons we have not seen yet.

1st circuit dodged not too long ago because the permit that wasn't available to the plaintiff hadn't been sought so the state, by the states own admission, could reject her application.

Fuck Massachusetts and the assholes that run that shit hole.

Arresting someone for making provisions to defend herself against a known violent attacker.  That's fucking sick.

Profeshunals dude.

This should come up every time the gun control stuff comes up.  Liberals are not against gun violence, they aren't about preventing gun deaths.  They are pacifists, they believe in pacifism, that is the core belief, many may not realize it but that is their goal, total disarmament.  And they realize they'll never disarm bad guys and they don't care they don't have an answer.  They are just fine with unilateral, one-sided disarmament, you give up your guns and the criminal or the dictator or the enemy nation keeps theirs.  You ditch nukes and they keep theirs.  They show this in banning stun guns, knives, ninjas stars, batons, anything that could be used as a weapon.  Lots of this stuff has been banned without a peep in cities and liberal states.

 They don't want you to not shoot a guy, they aren't about preventing accidental discharges or misses, they don't want you to have anything, they don't want you to fight back.  I'm mean they've come out with it back in the 1920's-30's and later in the Cold War "better Red than dead", crap like that, better that Hitler rule the world than fight back and possibly die for a silly thing like freedom and self rule.  It shows in that ABC thing about playing dead in your home.  They think the weapons create the violence and don't have any plan for dealing with aggressors.  It's insane and the public needs to see how insane their underlying beliefs that drive this stuff really is.

Fuck Massachusetts.

Not anymore.

Yep. Hope she gets a nice pay day and can get back on her feet.

I thought we were way past that already. Seems like it should be obvious that the 2nd applies outside the home. What other Rights in The Bill of Rights only apply inside ones home?

Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, etc etc but only inside your home, and if you're homeless you have no rights. Hmmm