Can dismissed domestic violence complaint justify revoking gun permit?

This local story from Massachusetts provides an interesting spin on both "sentencing" based on dismissed charges and the Second Amendment rights of those accused of violent behavior.  The piece is headlined "Man challenges state gun law: Constitutionality of 2005 permit revocation questioned," and here are the details:

Citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, a Shrewsbury man is challenging the constitutionality of a state law under which his license to carry a firearm was revoked five years ago by Police Chief Gary J. Gemme.  Lawyer Mel L. Greenberg, who represents Raymond J. Holden, filed an amended petition in Central District Court Sept. 10 appealing Chief Gemme’s 2005 revocation of Mr. Holden’s firearms license based on a determination that Mr. Holden was not a “suitable person” to carry a gun.

In a memorandum of law accompanying his amended petition, Mr. Greenberg said the term “suitable person,” as it appears in the law, is unconstitutionally vague given the Supreme Court’s June 28 ruling in the case of McDonald v. Chicago.  The nation’s highest court ruled in a 5-4 decision in that case that the Second Amendment grants citizens a fundamental right to bear arms that cannot be infringed upon by state and local governments.

Mr. Holden, who has a place of business in Worcester, had been granted a license to carry a firearm in 2001, but the license was suspended by Chief Gemme on Sept. 14, 2005, four days after Mr. Holden was arraigned in Westboro District Court for an alleged assault on his wife. The assault and battery complaint was dismissed Oct. 3, 2005, after Mr. Holden’s wife recanted a statement in a Shrewsbury Police Department incident report.

Judge Dennis J. Brennan, since retired, then ordered the reinstatement of Mr. Holden’s license in light of the dismissal of the assault charge. Chief Gemme followed the court’s order, but then revoked the license, saying he could consider underlying evidence that a crime had occurred even if a charge had been dismissed....

“The McDonald ruling adds the Second Amendment right to bear arms to the list of fundamental rights guaranteed to all citizens.  Consequently, any state statute or regulation which restricts or regulates such a right is subject to the strictest judicial scrutiny to insure that it reasonably regulates without infringement of that right and that its application does not result in a denial of due process rights,” Mr. Greenberg wrote.

Vague laws violate due process “because citizens do not receive fair notice of the conduct proscribed by the statute and because they do not limit the exercise of discretion by officials, creating the possibility of arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement,” the lawyer said in his memorandum.

As regular readers know, the Supreme Court and lower courts have repeatedly upheld the constitutionality of enhancing an offender's criminal sentence based on acquitted and dismissed conduct.  But, of course, in those cases the offender has been duly found guilty of some other offense. 

Here, Mr. Holden has not been convicted of anything at all.  But, of course, he also is not being sentenced, just having his gun permit revoked.  And if Police Chief Gary Gemme has a sound basis for concluding that Mr. Holden did in fact beat his wife, his permit revocation decision would seem to accord with Congress's basic view (which finds expression in federal criminal law) that a person who commits even a minor form of domestic violence should never be allowed to possess a firearm under any circumstances.