{"id":2437,"date":"2011-01-26T16:07:40","date_gmt":"2011-01-26T16:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2011\/01\/judge-upholds-law-preventing-g.php"},"modified":"2011-01-26T16:07:40","modified_gmt":"2011-01-26T16:07:40","slug":"judge-upholds-law-preventing-g","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/judge-upholds-law-preventing-g","title":{"rendered":"Judge Upholds Law Preventing Guns in Churches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by gun rights advocates who claimed a Georgia law prohibiting weapons in a house of worship was unconstitutional.<br \/>\nGeorgiaCarry.org, an organization that supports gun owners&#8217; rights, and two of its members filed suit against state officials saying the law placed an undue burden on them.<br \/>\n&#8220;The law at issue here&#8230; does not prohibit anyone from attending services at a place of worship,&#8221; ruled Judge Ashley Royal of the U.S. District Court in Macon, Ga.<br \/>\nThe judge said any burden on worship attendance was &#8220;tangential,&#8221; because the law requires that people not carry the weapon in services, leave it in their cars, or surrender it temporarily to security officers.<br \/>\nJerry Henry, executive director of GeorgiaCarry.org, said his group is mulling whether to appeal the decision. &#8220;We are disappointed in the judge&#8217;s interpretation,&#8221; he said.<br \/>\nHenry said a bill was introduced Monday (Jan. 24) in the Georgia legislature that would remove houses of worship from the list of places where carrying guns is considered illegal.<br \/>\n<strong>&#8212; Adelle M. Banks<\/strong>, <em>Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by gun rights advocates who claimed a Georgia law prohibiting weapons in a house of worship was unconstitutional. GeorgiaCarry.org, an organization that supports gun owners&#8217; rights, and two of its members filed suit against state officials saying the law placed an undue burden on them. &#8220;The law at&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":264,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-rns"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Judge Upholds Law Preventing Guns in Churches<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/judge-upholds-law-preventing-g\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Judge Upholds Law Preventing Guns in Churches\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by gun rights advocates who claimed a Georgia law prohibiting weapons in a house of worship was unconstitutional. GeorgiaCarry.org, an organization that supports gun owners&#8217; rights, and two of its members filed suit against state officials saying the law placed an undue burden on them. &#8220;The law at&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/judge-upholds-law-preventing-g\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-01-26T16:07:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"editor\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Judge Upholds Law Preventing Guns in Churches","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/01\/judge-upholds-law-preventing-g","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Judge Upholds Law Preventing Guns in Churches","og_description":"A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by gun rights advocates who claimed a Georgia law prohibiting weapons in a house of worship was unconstitutional. 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