This story was corrected on Oct. 7, 2011. An explanation follows the story.

Gun-rights advocates had hoped a Prince George’s County man’s arrest after he hid a gun in a bush would lead to a landmark decision overturning gun-control laws.

Instead, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down his appeal, upholding Maryland’s gun permit law and dealing the gun lobby a setback, an anti-gun group said.

“This was a decisive loss for the gun lobby,” said Daniel Vice, senior attorney for the gun-control advocacy group The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

“The [National Rifle Association] was hoping this case would set a nationwide precedent to allow guns on the streets, and instead the courts upheld reasonable restrictions on loaded weapons in public are permissible.”

Charles F. Williams Jr. had appealed through the state appellate courts his 2008 conviction for carrying a firearm.

After the Maryland Court of Appeals upheld the conviction in January, Williams appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in April, claiming his Second Amendment rights had been violated by the state law. On Monday, the Supreme Court justices turned down his appeal without explanation.

Both sides of the handgun issue had watched Williams v. Maryland closely, as a potential landmark case about state gun permit requirements.

Williams was arrested in 2007 after a police officer driving by a bus stop noticed him going through a backpack. The officer saw him place an object in a bush and stopped to ask what he was hiding. Wiliams told him it was his handgun.

Williams subsequently was convicted of carrying a handgun in public without a permit. He was sentenced to three years in prison, with all but one year suspended.

That set the stage for his legal appeals, which culminated at the Supreme Court.

The implication of the High Court’s rejection of the appeal is strong for Maryland, Vice said.

“The gun lobby was hoping this would lead to guns on the streets of Bethesda or Rockville or our parks, and that has been soundly rejected,” he said. “The gun lobby got a lot less from the Supreme Court than they were hoping for.”

A NRA spokeswoman reached this week said she would have one of the association’s lawyers comment, but none called.

Calls to Williams’ attorneys in Fairfax, Va., also were not returned.

The Maryland State Rifle and Pistol Association, a state organization affiliated with the NRA, is in favor of adults who have no history of criminal violence or mental illness being able to obtain permits to carry handguns, said Matt Daley, vice president for legislative affairs for the association.

Maryland’s gun permitting process is too restrictive, he said. In Maryland, the permit process to carry a handgun in public includes references from three people and proof through police reports or notarized statements of recent threats or assaults against the applicant.

“That is extraordinarily difficult to do,” Daley said.

But as the Maryland Court of Appeals noted in its Jan. 5 ruling, Williams never sought an application for a gun permit, so did not have legal standing to challenge the state’s law.

“I’m not sure this case was the best case to take to the Supreme Court,” Daley said.

“The Second Amendment does not bar a state from requiring residents to obtain a permit before carrying handguns outside the home,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Brian Kleinbord, chief of the criminal appeals division of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office. “Not surprisingly, no lower court has held to the contrary.”

The Maryland Court of Appeals ruling had said the Supreme Court’s ruling about handguns did not extend beyond possession in a home.

“It was a big win for us,” Kleinbord said of the Supreme Court action. “I don’t know when the court is going to take their next Second Amendment case, but we made our best argument that this should not be it.”

cford@gazette.net

Correction: The original version of the story misidentified Daniel Vice.