SABATTUS — Ray Carrier has lived at the Oak Hill Trailer Park for the past seven years. Disabled and unable to walk very well, he likes to carry a handgun for safety.
“(My biggest worry) is that I will not be able to protect myself,” said Carrier, 58.
Daniel Boutin has owned the park for the past 30 years and said he started banning guns from being carried out and around the property years ago — for safety.
“I don’t want to have to face a gun on my own property,” he said. “I’ve had issues with tenants.”
The argument seems to mirror a recent Rockland renter’s case that has led to a lawsuit and possible change to state law. But there’s one wrinkle: Carrier owns the trailer he calls home. Boutin owns the land it sits on.
Advocates on both sides of gun rights issues say they’ve never heard of a situation like it.
“I wouldn’t even know how to Google it,” said Thomas Franklin, board president for the Maine Gun Safety Coalition in Portland.
The trailer park disagreement arose earlier this week when Boutin sent tenants in his 114-unit trailer park an updated list of rules. In the cover letter, he drew attention to Rule No. 24: fireworks and firearms.
Boutin meant to point out the new ban on fireworks. But what Carrier noticed was the section prohibiting firearms from being carried around the trailer park.
Boutin said the rule has been there for 30 years. Carrier said he was never aware of it and doesn’t remember ever seeing it before.
Although Carrier has carried his handgun through the park before without a problem, he’s now worried he’ll get evicted for it.
“I am fighting for everybody’s constitutional rights — that’s what it’s all about,” said Carrier, an Air Force veteran who worked construction until he was disabled. “I understand that it’s Boutin‘s rules or the highway, I understand that. But this is Second Amendment rights I’m fighting for.”
Carrier has not complained to Boutin about the rule, saying the two have had heated disagreements in the past. He said he did raise the issue with Sen. Garrett Mason, R-Lisbon, who represents Sabattus. Mason could not be reached for comment.
Boutin said he hasn’t heard from any tenants upset about the rule. He said he’s a Second Amendment advocate himself, but he believes the rule gives him the backing he needs in case a tenant ever becomes a nuisance with a gun.
“If a man takes a .22 out and he shoots a coyote eating his cat, I’m not going to evict him for that,” Boutin said. “If a man takes his gun out and shoots the tire out of an individual that drove by fast, I’m going to evict him. You can see the difference. But what do I do, do I take a full page and explain this? It’s easier to be simple, say ‘no guns,’ and take it on a case-by-case basis.”
Carrier believes he has the right to carry his gun because he owns the trailer. Boutin said he’s not stopping his tenants from having guns inside their homes, but he believes he has the right to ban them from carrying weapons around his park.
Lawyers and advocates on either side of gun rights agree it’s a complex situation raising issues of property rights, gun rights and who has the ability to ban firearms when one person owns a building and another person owns the land it’s on.
“There are a variety of ownership and leaseholder interests out there,” said Patrick Strawbridge, a Boston-based lawyer representing the tenant in the Rockland case. “Condominiums could have the same issues.”
The Maine Gun Safety Coalition and Gun Owners of Maine tend to fall on opposite sides of many gun control issues. In this situation, representatives happen to agree: It’s a delicate balancing act, but the landowner probably has the right to prohibit someone from walking around his trailer park with a gun.
“Property rights are every bit as important as gun rights,” said Todd Tolhurst, president of Gun Owners of Maine in China, though he believes the park’s rule may be “somewhat misguided.”
“The only ones who will obey that rule are the good guys — like his tenant — and not the bad guys that his tenant feels are going to victimize him,” he said. “Bad guys don’t care if they violate some landlord’s rule.”
Dmitry Bam, an associate professor at the University of Maine School of Law in Portland, teaches Constitutional law. Although the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms, he said, it only protects against interference by the government, not private citizens.
He agreed that property owners have the right to prohibit guns on their land.
“When it’s truly private property, I don’t see much of a legal claim that he would have,” Bam said.
Strawbridge, the lawyer for the tenant case in Rockland, isn’t so sure. He believes the Maine Civil Rights Act protects Mainers’ right to carry a gun, regardless of whether another private citizen is telling them not to do so.
“At the end of the day, an outright ban on weapons for self-defense … is problematic under the Maine Civil Rights Act,” he said.
He hopes his Rockland case, which is in the Knox County Superior Court, will provide more clarity.
In Sabattus, Carrier hopes his landlord will drop the rule and allow him to keep carrying his gun. He can’t afford to move, he said, either to find a trailer park that allows guns or because he’s been evicted from this one.
“I can understand (a gun ban in) the renting of an apartment,” he said. “I totally understand that. They don’t own the building. I own where I live.”
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