Court Opinion

ID: 9703501
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:58:59.337703+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:49.629932
License: Public Domain

WILLIAM A. BABLITCH, J.
¶ 90. (concurring). I join the majority opinion and write only to answer Chief Justice Abrahamson's dissent.
¶ 91. Chief Justice Abrahamson's dissent would find Mr. Hamdan guilty, notwithstanding that Mr. Ham-*492dan carried the gun in his pocket at night, in his own store, located in a high crime neighborhood, which had been the subject of past robberies and homicides, and had himself been the subject of an attempted murder in the store. I could not disagree more.
¶ 92. The Chief Justice's dissent, in its attempt to save the Carrying a Concealed Weapon statute, eviscerates the constitutional amendment. It renders the constitutional amendment a sham by reading into it the words "unless concealed." The inevitable and logical result of that interpretation is to create absurdities neither the legislature nor the voters could have intended.
¶ 93. Based on the Chief Justice's interpretation, it is lawful to have a gun on top of your night table or bureau, but not in a drawer; it is lawful to have a gun case in the home if the guns inside , can be seen, but unlawful if the guns are behind a solid door and cannot be seen. With all due respect, that just doesn't make sense.
¶ 94. The majority is absolutely correct in concluding that this could not have been the result intended by the legislators who wrote the constitutional amendment nor the voters who ratified it. The dissent by Justice Crooks, who would find the statute unconstitutional, by implication quite obviously agrees that this could not have been the intent behind the constitutional amendment.
¶ 95. The very difficult task confronted by the majority was to conform the statute to the newly enacted constitutional amendment, if possible. It is well-established that statutes are presumed constitutional; thus, our first responsibility is to preserve the statute if possible. State v. McManus, 152 Wis. 2d 113, 129, 447 N.W.2d 654 (1989). I conclude that the major*493ity did exceedingly well in accomplishing that task, and that is why I join the majority.
¶ 96. The framework set out by the majority for the circuit courts to follow in deciding these very fact-specific cases is not at all unlike the framework these courts have used for decades in deciding 4th Amendment cases, which are themselves very fact-specific. In 4th Amendment cases, the court is confronted with historical facts and constitutional facts. Constitutional facts, i.e., whether the facts are in conformity with the constitutional demands, are determined by applying the historical facts to the constitution, which is a question of law determined by the court. State v. Jennings, 2002 WI 44, ¶ 20, 252 Wis. 2d 228, 647 N.W.2d 142. The touchstone is "reasonableness." So too here. The constitutional facts are determined by the court, applying the historical facts to the constitutional amendment, and "reasonableness" is the touchstone. Accordingly, I respectfully disagree with the Chief Justice's dissent and join the majority.