The state’s highest court on Wednesday rejected challenges on several grounds to parts of the state’s gun licensing law.
Among other things, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the Worcester police chief did not overstep when he denied a license to carry a gun to a man who had been charged with domestic violence, but had not been convicted.
The court said the man’s alleged conduct “in punching his wife in the face, dragging her out of his vehicle, and throwing her to the ground constitutes criminal conduct that would have disqualified her from licensure had he been convicted. The absence of a conviction does not prevent such conduct from the consideration by the chief.”
The “acts of domestic violence provide precisely the kind and quality of evidence that rationally support a finding of unsuitability,” the unanimous court found in a 34-page ruling written by Justice Francis X. Spina.
The case, Chief of Police of the City of Worcester v. Raymond J. Holden Jr., drew amicus briefs from gun rights advocates as well as gun violence prevention advocates.
Gun rights advocates were unsuccessful in their attempt to invoke a 2008 US Supreme Court ruling, Heller v. District of Columbia, to loosen regulations in Massachusetts.