Group to appeal ruling against guns in church

By Rhonda Cook

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A gun rights group filed a notice Wednesday that it will appeal a federal judge's dismissal of a suit challenging a state law banning weapons in churches, mosques and synagogues.

Enlarge photo

Bob Andres, bandres@ajc.com A customer looks over a Kimber 1911 at Adventure Outdoors in Smyrna. U.S. District Judge Ashley Royal late Monday dismissed a lawsuit filed by the gun rights organization GeorgiaCarry.org and the minister at the Baptist Tabernacle of Thomaston.

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John Monroe, the attorney for GeorgiaCarry.org, filed a notice that he plans to ask the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review U.S. District Judge Ashley Royal's decision. Royal ruled Monday that a 2010 law that lists places of worship among locations where guns are not allowed did not violate the First Amendment right to freedom of religion or the Second Amendment guarantee of a right to bear arms.

The lawsuit -- brought by GeorgiaCarry.org, the organization's past president and  the minister at the Baptist Tabernacle of Thomaston -- challenged the inclusion of places of worship on a list of places where guns are not allowed --  government buildings, courthouses, jails and prisons, state mental hospitals, nuclear power plants, bars without the owner’s permission and polling places.

The suit called the handgun "the quintessential self-defense weapon in the United States." Former GeorgiaCarry.org president Ed Stone and other worshipers argued that they should be able to arm themselves "for the protection of their families and themselves" without fear of arrest and prosecution on a misdemeanor charge. The Rev. Jonathan Wilkins of the Baptist Tabernacle said he wanted to have a gun for his protection while working in his church office.

The church claimed members' efforts to practice their faith had been “impermissibly burdened” because they felt they needed to be armed but feared being arrested if they brought their guns to services.

And Stone wrote in a filing that his  “motivation to carry a firearm as a matter of habit derives from one of my Lord's last recorded statements at the ‘last supper,’ that ‘whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one ... I believe that this injunction requires me to obtain, keep and carry a firearm wherever I happen to be.”

But Royal wrote that the Thomaston church had not claimed “its members' religious beliefs require that any member carry a firearm into the Tabernacle, whether during worship services or otherwise.”

Royal wrote worshipers were free to leave their guns in the car or they could secure or temporarily surrender their weapons with security or management at door as they go inside to worship.

In the case of the minister, Royal wrote Wilkins could have a gun in his church office if he had permission from the Tabernacle’s management. “If management or security personnel at the Tabernacle, which presumably includes Wilkins as CEO, did not grant him permission to secure or store a firearm in his office, then that would be at their discretion,” Royal wrote.

The judge goes on to write that the only risk of criminal sanction is if “they refuse to comply with the law’s mandates about carrying firearms in places of worship.

"Complying with the law's requirements does not prohibit them from attending worship services nor does it place an ‘unmistakable’ pressure on them ‘to forgo religious precepts.’”

Just before Royal filed his decision on Monday, Rep. Bobby Franklin, R-Marietta, filed a bill to remove the restriction on guns in places of worship.