Tuesday, December 04, 2018

INTERESTING SECOND AMENDMENT ISSUE

by Bob Walsh

Leyla Pirnie is a grad student at Harvard. She lives in off-campus privately owned housing. She has six roommates. (Must be as good-size house.) She was out of town for the weekend and her roomies tossed her room, because the has a MAGA ballcap and comes from Alabama so they assumed she owned guns. She did. They called the cops. The cops showed up. She allowed the cops to inspect the guns. The cops said she owned the guns legally and they had no further interest in the matter. (Presumably they were secured in some fashion, as required by MASS state law, but if they were in a safe how would the roomies have actually found them. Maybe trigger locks?)

In any case the roomies (who are clearly guilty of trespass and invasion of privacy) sniveled to the landlord, asserting that the mere presence of the firearms makes them so uneasy they can not enjoy living there. The landlord wrote a letter directing Ms. Pirnie to move out, and asserting that if she refused, and if the other girls DID, then she would be liable for their rent, $1,000 each per month.

So far it appears the law is on Ms. Pirnie's side, as long as the rental or lease agreement does not specify no firearms. The other young women, who are also adults, may be bothered by the presence of firearms (or more likely by the presence of a Trump supporter) but don't seem to have much legal room. The letter the landlord was not an order to quit the premises nor an eviction notice.

Curioser and curioser. I wonder how it will fall out.

1 comment:

Trey Rusk said...

Since no law has been broken, I would send a 10 day certified mail demand letter to the landlord stating that I would willingly move at his expense. If not then I would sue each room mate and the landlord individually.