Appeals court upholds Jacksonville Police departments arrest of man for carrying a gun into credit union

A state appeals court has ruled that the city of Jacksonville had the right to arrest a man who walked into a local credit union with a pistol on his hip in 2011.  But if Jason Dean Tulley did the same thing today, his attorney claims, it would be perfectly legal.   Tulley, a Jacksonville resident, was arrested and fined $200 after entering First Educators Credit Union wearing an openly visible handgun in a hip holster. According to court documents, Tulley argued with a police officer who asked him to return the pistol to his vehicle, but later did return the gun to his truck, and re-entered the bank. He was arrested a few days later and fined $200 for "carrying a pistol on premises not his own." For decades, Alabama law prohibited people from openly carrying handguns except on their own property or on property under their control, though people with concealed-carry permits could carry hidden weapons in most places.  Tulley's arrest became a  cause  for Alabama's open-carry activists, who argue that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry guns openly in public places. Like many other open-carry activists, Tulley made a video recording of his encounter with the Jacksonville police officer and posted it on YouTube.  Open-carry activists raised money to help Tulley fight the arrest in circuit court and later in the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. Tulley argued that the state's law against openly carrying handguns on other people's property was unconstitutionally vague. While the appeals court debated Tulley's case, similar arguments were making their way through the Alabama Legislature. In a move supported by gun-rights activists — and opposed by many sheriffs and police chiefs — state lawmakers in 2013 passed a law that made getting concealed-carry permits easier and allowed open carrying of firearms on most private property unless the owners expressly prohibit it, typically by posting a “no-guns” sign. In a 26-page decision handed down in Feb. 28, the appeals court denied most of Tulley's claims. Drawing on case law and rulings of attorneys general from the 1800s to the 21st century, the five-judge panel rejected Tulley's assertions that the credit union was a public place and that state law laid out no specific punishment for violating open-carry law.