A federal judge for the District Court of Connecticut dismissed a lawsuit challenging a Connecticut law prohibiting firearm carry in state parks. Judge Janet Bond Arterton, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1995, issued a 17-page ruling, in which she found plaintiff David Nastri’s lawsuit to be “imaginary and speculative conjecture,” because he had failed to prove “an actual impending and credible threat of prosecution” for carrying a firearm in a state park. As a result, Nastri’s lawsuit lacked standing, she ruled.
In response, Nastri’s attorney filed an appeal, stating that Judge Arterton’s ruling “disregarded multiple U.S. Supreme Court and federal appellate precedents and invented an unprecedented legal fiction to avoid reaching the true Second Amendment issues, which would have spelled the end of Connecticut’s unconstitutional law.”
Nastri used to carry a firearm on his person while visiting state parks in Connecticut, yet was forced to stop after discovering such carry was prohibited in state parks. Nastri has stated that he will not return to carrying a firearm during his park visits until the law is overturned, as he does not want to break the law, even if it is unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong celebrated the ruling, saying that laws like the prohibition on carrying firearms in state parks “are life-saving and constitutional.”
Curiously, part of Judge Arterton’s justification for dismissing Nastri’s lawsuit was that there is apparently “no evidence the regulation had ever been enforced” since it first came into effect in 1918, leaving Second Amendment advocates to question how the law can be considered “life-saving” and why it’s still on the books.