Case Name: Allen WILSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Alaska, Appellee
Court: Alaska Court of Appeals
Jurisdiction: Alaska
Decision Date: 2009-05-22
Citations: 207 P.3d 565
Docket Number: No. A-9786
Parties: Allen WILSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Alaska, Appellee.
Judges: Before: COATS, Chief Judge, MANNHEIMER, Judge, and STEWART, Senior Court of Appeals Judge.
Reporter: Pacific Reporter 3d
Volume: 207
Pages: 565–593

Head Matter:
Allen WILSON, Appellant, v. STATE of Alaska, Appellee.
No. A-9786.
Court of Appeals of Alaska.
May 22, 2009.
Renee McFarland, Assistant Public Defender, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for Appellant.
Diane L. Wendlandt, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Special Prosecutions and Appeals, Anchorage, and Talis J. Colberg, Attorney General, Juneau, for Appellee.
Before: COATS, Chief Judge, MANNHEIMER, Judge, and STEWART, Senior Court of Appeals Judge.
Sitting by assignment made pursuant to article IV, section 11 of the Alaska Constitution and Administrative Rule 23(a).

Opinion:
OPINION
COATS, Chief Judge.
Introduction
Anchorage Police Officer Derek Sitz made a routine traffic stop of a car driven by Allen Wilson near the intersection of 36th Avenue and C Street in Anchorage. During the traffic stop, Sitz discovered that Wilson was in possession of a loaded 45 revolver and that Wilson had previously been convicted of a felony. Sitz arrested Wilson for being a convicted felon in possession of a concealable firearm.
After the State indicted Wilson, he moved to dismiss the indictment on the ground that the statute that prohibited him from possessing a concealable firearm violated article I, section 19 of the Alaska Constitution, which protects "[the individual right to keep and bear arms." Superior Court Judge Michael L. Wolverton denied Wilson's motion to dismiss the indictment. Following his convietion, Wilson appealed Judge Wolverton's denial of his motion to dismiss. We affirm.
Why we conclude that AS 11.61.200(a)(1) does mot violate article I, section 19 of the Alaska Constitution
The thrust of Wilson's argument is that the statute prohibiting a felon from possessing a concealable firearm violates article I, section 19 of the Alaska Constitution because it does not differentiate between violent and non-violent felons, and thus is not narrowly tailored to achieve the State's compelling interest in preventing violent crime. Wilson argues that article I, section 19 guarantees an individual's right to keep and bear arms, and therefore any law that restricts that right must be narrowly tailored to protect a compelling government interest.
Wilson points out that he was convicted of a non-violent, class C felony-theft in the second degree-for fraudulently obtaining unemployment benefits. He states that he is a sixty-seven-year-old man who lives in a cabin on a homestead, lives a subsistence lifestyle, and needs a handgun for personal protection. He argues that the State cannot justify restricting his constitutional right to possess a concealable firearm.
Courts-including this court-have consistently rejected arguments similar to Wilson's. For example, the United States Supreme Court recently decided District of Columbia v. Heller under the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides, "[a] well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." At issue was a District of Columbia law that prohibited a person from carrying an unlicensed handgun. The law authorized the chief of police to issue one-year licenses and required residents to keep any "lawfully owned firearms . 'unloaded and dissembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device.'" Heller, a D.C. special police officer, applied to register a handgun he wished to keep at his home. When the District refused his application, Heller filed for an injunction.
The Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm. "Under any of the standards of serutiny that [the Court has] applied to enumerated constitutional rights," the Court held, the District's total ban on the possession of handguns in the home and the requirement that any lawfully possessed firearms in the home be dissembled or bound by a trigger lock was unconstitutional because it made it impossible for a citizen to use the firearm for "the core lawful purpose of self-defense."
The Court made it clear, however, that the right to keep and bear arms, like other rights, is not unlimited. The Court specifically stated that "nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." Furthermore, the majority opinion seems to indicate that if Heller were a convicted felon, the District could refuse to allow him to register his handgun and possess it in his home. The majority states, "[alssuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home." Therefore, Heller provides little support for Wilson's argument.
It is important to note that Heller was decided under the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is unclear whether the Second Amendment applies to the states. In 1894, the United States Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment applies only to the federal government and not to the states. But just recently, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the Heller decision now mandates the opposite result. In Nordyke v. King, the Ninth Cireuit held (based on Heller) that the Second Amendment protects a fundamental liberty interest and therefore "the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment and applies it against the states."
We need not address this issue further because, as we have already noted, the Supreme Court declared in Heller that "nothing in [its] opinion should be taken to cast doubt" on the laws prohibiting felons from possessing firearms.
However, the Alaska Constitution also expressly protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms. Article I, section 19 of the Alaska Constitution provides:
A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The individual right to keep and bear arms shall not be denied or infringed by the State or a political subdivision of the State.
We discussed this provision of the Alaska Constitution in Gibson v. State. In that case, the defendants argued that the statute prohibiting possession of firearms while intoxicated was unconstitutional under article I, section 19 of the Alaska Constitution when applied to a person who is on his own property or in his own home. In that decision, we analyzed the 1994 amendment to article I, section 19 of the Alaska Constitution, which added the language: "The individual right to keep and bear arms shall not be denied or infringed by the State or a political subdivision of the State."
In analyzing the intent of the voters who approved this constitutional amendment, we looked to the statement in support of the ballot measure that appeared in the Division of Elections's 1994 official election pamphlet. We relied on the statement, which was prepared by the advocates of the proposed amendment, that assured voters that the amendment "[would) NOT overturn or invalidate state laws restricting access or possession of arms by convicted felons, mental incompetents, illegal aliens, those under the influence of drugs or alcohol, juveniles, or in school buildings." The pamphlet further stated, "These laws are well established and have been consistently upheld in Courts across the nation, even when considered under the toughest legal standard and under constitutional language more stringent than is proposed by [this amendment]." Rely ing on this language and the history of the proposed amendment, we concluded "that the people who voted in favor of the amendment did not intend to invalidate Alaska's laws regulating the possession of firearms by intoxicated persons."
We then considered whether the statute violated Alaska's constitutional right to privacy under article I, section 22 of the Alaska Constitution, and we ultimately concluded that the Alaska statute prohibiting the possession of a firearm while intoxicated bore "a close and substantial relationship to the state's legitimate interest in protecting the health and safety of its citizens," and was therefore constitutional.
Two years later, in DeMars v. State, an unpublished decision, this court held that article I, section 19 of the Alaska Constitution did not invalidate DeMars's conviction for being a felon in possession of a concealable firearm. DeMars had been convicted of a felony in 1987 for leaving the scene of an accident and had been unconditionally released. Relying on Gibson, we stated that article I, section 19 "did not limit the State's authority to regulate firearms when there is a significant risk that firearms will be used in a criminal or dangerous fashion." We then concluded: "Because the legislature has the authority to regulate the possession of firearms by convicted felons, and because article I, section 19 does not restrict that authority, DeMars cannot rely on that provision to claim the statute violates article I, section 19." DeMars also argued that the felon in possession statute violated equal protection because the statute did not distinguish between violent and non-violent felons. We rejected that challenge as well.
Therefore, under our prior cases, we have rejected the constitutional challenge that Wilson now brings. Furthermore, other states have consistently rejected similar constitutional challenges. We accordingly conclude that Judge Wolverton did not err in denying Wilson's motion to dismiss.
The judgment of the superior court is AFFIRMED.
STEWART, Senior Judge, concurring.
. AS 11.61.200(a)(1).
. 554 U.S. -, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 171 LEd.2d 637 (2008).
. Id. at -, 128 S.Ct. at 2788.
. Id.
. Id.
. Id.
. Id. at -, 128 S.Ct. at 2799, 2814.
. Id. at -, 128 S.Ct. at 2817-18.
. Id. at -, 128 S.Ct. at 2799, 2816.
. Id. at -, 128 S.Ct. at 2816-17 (emphasis added).
. Id. at -, 128 S.Ct. at 2822 (emphasis added).
. See United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 553, 23 L.Ed. 588 (1875); Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 265, 6 S.Ct. 580, 584, 29 L.Ed. 615 (1886); Miller v. Texas, 153 U.S. 535, 538, 14 S.Ct. 874, 875, 38 L.Ed. 812 (1894); Heller, 554 U.S. at -, 128 S.Ct. at 2813 n. 23.
. Nordyke v. King, 563 F.3d 439, 456-57 (9th Cir.2009).
. 563 F.3d 439.
. Id. at 457.
. 930 P.2d 1300 (Alaska App.1997).
. Id. at 1301.
. Id.
. Id. at 1302.
. Id.
. Id.
. Id.
. Id.
. Alaska App. Memorandum Opinion and Judgment No. 4100 (Aug. 18, 1999),1999 WL 652444.
. Id. at 5, 1999 WL 652444 at *2.
. Id. at 1-2, 1999 WL 652444 at *1.
. Id. at 5, 1999 WL 652444 at *2.
. Id.
. Id.
. Id. at 6, 1999 WL 652444 at *3.
. See, e.g., State v. Brown, 571 A.2d 816 (Me.1990); State v. Cole, 264 Wis.2d 520, 665 N.W.2d 328 (2003); People v. Swint, 225 Mich.App. 353, 572 N.W.2d 666 (1997).