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Md bill -- "shall issue" for women
25 Maryland delegates have cosponsored a bill to establish shall issue for women, while retaining may issue for men.
It's an interesting approach. Generally, gender discrimination is subject (if I remember correctly) to some level of review greater than rational basis and less than strict scrutiny. I suspect it wouldn't be hard to find data establishing that women are victims of violent crime more often than are men, in proportion to the population of each. (They're also less likely to be perpetrators, but that's not so relevant to the bill since the screening process is the same for both genders -- it just provides that men must prove a need for self defense, whereas women need only show they want it for self defense).
(Hat tip to reader Adrian, who spotted the bill)
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I don't have a source handy, but men are disproportionately victims of violent crime in general. Women are disproportionately victims of certain violent crimes like rape and domestic violence.
Men also disproportionately commit violent crime in general. There might be some interesting statistic about how women in general are victimized more than they victimize others, but that doesn't seem germane to concealed carry.
I don't think this approach could pass muster with equal protection, but it makes political opposition more difficult. Not that I have any problem with that :-)
What ever happened to the old Constitutional version of we all stand equal before God and equal before the law? This is just another attempt by modernist liberals to fracture society by having unequal protection, as in caste system societies. i.e. women being granted a higher social position. Strict construction interpretation has our rights derived from God, not granted by legal decree (a work of man).
I agree that this probably will not pass equal protection review, but I will boldly assert that it should. Equal protection requires that the individuals who are being treated differently are "similarly situated." In the realm of personal security, men and women are just not similarly situated. In our age of political correctness, the Court would probably delude themselves into the idea that we are all equal. But it just ain't so.
What about female judges?
I don't see how that's going to get past "equal protection."