MANHATTAN (CN) — A Connecticut veteran asked the Second Circuit on Wednesday to give new life to his lawsuit challenging handgun carrying regulations in state parks.
David Nastri, as described on his lawyer’s website, is a “combat veteran, a financial advisor, an attorney, a kidney donor and an active participant in his community.” In early 2023, Nastri became a gun rights advocate as well when he sued Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes over a law that bans carrying handguns for self-defense in state parks.
Members of the public may carry handguns in Connecticut parks for hunting and sport during certain times of year.
“Connecticut, however, does not permit non-hunting members of the public who possess valid Connecticut pistol permits to carry handguns for the purposes of self-defense in case of confrontation while using state parks or forests,” Nastri writes in his lawsuit calling the law unconstitutional.
He says the state is “depriving its citizens of the most popular means of self-defense where it is undoubtedly the hardest for first responders to protect them.”
Nastri appealed to the Second Circuit after a lower court dismissed his complaint last July. A federal judge found Nastri had a lack of standing since he failed to prove that he faced a credible threat of prosecution for violating the law.
Cameron Atkinson, Nastri’s attorney, told the appellate court Wednesday that his client could face severe consequences for breaking an unjust rule. “It’s a $35 fine and up to a one-year ban from all Connecticut state parks,” Atkinson said. “It is a restraint on his liberty to use those parks.”
The state countered by pointing out that Nastri has never actually been punished under the law.
“The plaintiff in this case brought a challenge to a regulation that imposes only a $35 infraction and a temporary ban from the parks, even though he could raise a Second Amendment challenge as a defense if he ever were ticketed,” state lawyer Tim Holzman told the court Wednesday.
“Most importantly, the plaintiff has offered nothing but speculation that this regulation ever actually would be enforced against him if he did carry his handgun.”
Holzman added that if Nastri were to be ticketed, he could adjudicate the infraction in court before having to face any penalties. There, he’d be able to mount the Second Amendment defense or raise any other constitutional issue.
“You don’t think that’s daunting?” U.S. Circuit Judge Dennis Jacobs, a George H.W. Bush appointee, shot back. “He could mount a constitutional litigation — wouldn’t that inhibit him from wishing to go into a park with a gun?”
Holzman didn’t disagree, but said that the complaint is still “certainly not on par” with other pre-enforcement challenges because of the purely speculative nature of the action.
“Why is it purely speculative here?” asked U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Sullivan. “If you have the head of the parks police basically saying, ‘Yeah, we’ll enforce this, if we get calls on this, we’ll come out,’ it doesn’t seem to me to be speculative.”
Sullivan, a Trump appointee, suggested the state was trying to have it both ways.
“You want to use [the law] to chill or check people from engaging in this kind of conduct, but then when somebody tries to call you on it, you say it’s speculative," he said.
Holzman disagreed. He said Nastri had admitted in his complaint to having violated the law “for many years,” but never proved that he was even warned not to carry his handgun in the parks.
“We’re talking thousands of occasions before he realized that this regulation existed,” Holzman said. “There was no evidence presented at all that this regulation is enforced against those who carry concealed for self-defense.”
Atkinson countered that this shouldn’t matter, though — if his client were to be caught with a gun at a Connecticut park, the state would immediately assume he’s not a law-abiding citizen.
“This is Mr. Nastri’s only way to protect his Second Amendment rights in state parks, and it is necessary,” Atkinson said.
The three-judge panel, which included Bill Clinton appointee U.S. Circuit Judge Pierre Leval alongside Jacobs and Sullivan, did not immediately issue a decision following Wednesday’s arguments.
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