The Second Amendment Law Center worked with other Second Amendment advocacy groups to file an amicus brief in the case Caniglia v. Strom. This case questions whether the “community caretaking” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement extends to the home.
Application of warrantless “community caretaking” searches to houses would violate the explicit text of the Fourth Amendment, would be inconsistent with the common-law tradition that one’s house is one’s castle, would have been anathema to the Founders, and would mark an unprecedented, dangerous departure from this Court’s jurisprudence. Existing exceptions to the warrant requirement more than suffice to meet society’s needs consistent with the basic premise and sanctity of the Fourth Amendment.
Among the other privacy interests at stake is that of the right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment. As this Court’s precedents demonstrate, there is no “gun” exception to the Fourth Amendment. The handful of lower courts that apply “community caretaking” to the home hold or suggest that a person has no right to his or her own firearm if seized, because one can buy another one. That makes a mockery both of the right to keep arms and the right against unreasonable searches and seizures. The traditional, narrow exceptions to these rights suffice without opening the floodgates to an exception that would swallow the rule.
The common law established that one’s house is one’s castle and that general warrants are invalid. Our Founders heightened those principles in opposing the writs of assistance, the first states declared against general warrants and in favor of the right to bear arms, a declaration of those rights was demanded when the Constitution was proposed without one, and the discussions on what became the Bill of Rights explain why those rights were considered so fundamental.
Applying the “community caretaking” function to the home will be used as a pretext to conduct warrantless searches for firearms. That will particularly occur in the jurisdictions with the most onerous restrictions on firearms. As existing cases exemplify, officers will not bother to obtain warrants based on probable cause and instead will conduct searches based on speculation that a firearm might be present in a house and thus that someone might supposedly be in danger. The doctrine of exigent circumstances suffices to cover real emergencies without allowing the onslaught of warrantless searches that would follow if the “community caretaking” doctrine is applied to houses.