Get Your Gun, Pa

State v. Yang, Minn.Ct.App., 6/18/2012.  Mr. Yang was out in his own front yard, minding his own business if you disregard the gun he was carrying around.  Someone called 911 to report that an Asian man wearing red pants – Mr. Yang -  had a gun at a certain location and the cops came calling, drew down on Mr. Yang and his buddies and ordered them all to the ground.  An officer cuffed Mr. Yang and asked him where the gun was; Mr. Yang said it was in his coat. 

The officers initially arrested Mr. Yang for carrying a handgun in a public place; recall that having a permit to carry a handgun in a public place is a defense, not an element of the offense.  Read about that here.   The state upped the charge to possession of a handgun by an ineligible person when they learned that he had a prior felony.  Mr. Yang argued that the officers had no reasonable articulable suspicion that he was engaged in criminal behavior in a public place, making his seizure and the discovery of the gun unlawful.

Now, back in ‘03 when the gun rights guys pushed through the carry/conceal law one imagines that they took care to ensure that they could do whatever they wanted to do with their guns while in their own home and curtilage, it being a castle and all.  So, they wrote the law to say that you needed a permit to carry/conceal only in a “public place,” and then they made sure to provide a definition of just what a “public place” was:

"Public place" means property owned, leased, or controlled by a governmental unit and private property that is regularly and frequently open to or made available for use by the public in sufficient numbers to give clear notice of the property's current dedication to public use but does not include: a person's dwelling house or premises, the place of business owned or managed by the person, or land possessed by the person; a gun show, gun shop, or hunting or target shooting facility; or the woods, fields, or waters of this state where the person is present lawfully for the purpose of hunting or target shooting or other lawful activity involving firearms.

Minn. Stat. § 624.7181, subd. 1(c). No one thought that Mr. Yang’s front yard was government property so the question was whether his front yard was private property dedicated to public use.  The state said, yes, because the definition excludes “land possessed by the person” which the state thought did not include residential land.  Mr. Yang said, no, because the definition excludes “a person’s dwelling house or premises,” so no one’s front yard was a public place.  The court of appeals didn’t like either of those suggestions; instead, they looked only at the first half of the definition which said what a public pace was:  private property that had been dedicated to the public for its use.  Think parks and water treatment plants.  Not one’s front yard under anyone’s definition so for Mr. Yang, his yard – not his neighbor’s – is not a public place.  So long as Mr. Yang (and the cops) know where the boundary line is, and he stays within it then he can pack his gun around all he wants.  (Unless he’s intoxicated, in which case there’s a different, judicially created definition of “public place”.  State v. Gradishar, 765 N.W.2d 901 (Minn.Ct.App., 2009).