RICHMOND, Va. (CN) — The Fourth Circuit ruled in a split decision Tuesday that Maryland's law requiring potential gun buyers to present a handgun qualification license before purchase violated the U.S. Constitution.
"Plaintiffs have shown that Maryland's handgun-licensure law regulates a course of conduct protected by the Second Amendment," U.S. Circuit Judge Julius Richardson, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote in the opinion. "Maryland has not established that the law is consistent with our Nation's historical tradition."
The judge sided with a gun rights members organization, a gun store and two individuals who all claimed in their federal lawsuit that the provision of Maryland's Firearm Safety Act of 2013 that bars the sale or purchase of handguns without a valid handgun qualification license created an unfair hurdle.
"Because the HQL requirement burdens the right to acquire a handgun for self-defense in the home without a historical antecedent, the state cannot meet its burden of demonstrating that the HQL Requirement is consistent with this nation's tradition of the right to keep and bear arms," the challengers' brief states.
Marylanders must submit their fingerprints to the Maryland State Police and complete a half-day of classroom instruction and a live-fire exercise to receive their HQL. They then have to wait for up to 30 days for the state to approve the application before they can apply to purchase a handgun under the state's preexisting and continuing 77R handgun registration process, which requires purchasers to register their guns, watch a firearms safety video, complete another background check and wait an additional seven business days.
The Maryland General Assembly passed the law following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 first-graders and six adults were murdered by a 20-year-old gunman who killed the victims with an AR-15-type Bushmaster rifle. Violating the HQL requirement is a misdemeanor punishable by up to five years in jail and a $10,000 fine.
A federal judge in Baltimore initially determined that the plaintiffs lacked standing before the Richmond, Virginia-based appeals court remanded the case in 2020 and allowed them to continue pressing their Second Amendment claim. The U.S. district court then granted the state's motion for summary judgment a year later and upheld the handgun qualification license requirement, prompting another appeal to the Fourth Circuit.
In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, where the conservative majority found that New York violated the Second Amendment by restricting who gets to carry a concealed weapon in public. The ruling made carrying a gun publicly (with a license) a constitutional right and changed the standard for how courts determine if a gun control law violates the Second Amendment, setting off challenges to gun restrictions across the country.
"Bruen effected a sea change in Second Amendment law," Richardson wrote.
Before Bruen, courts used a two-step interest-balancing framework in analyzing firearm regulations. The courts first asked whether a challenged regulation burdened conduct protected by the Second Amendment. If the regulation did burden lawful conduct, the court would assess the regulation's constitutionality using means-end scrutiny.
Bruen instead supplied an analysis centered on the Second Amendment's text and history, finding that if the Second Amendment's plain text covers an individual's conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. At that point, the challenged regulation is unconstitutional unless the government can show that the regulation is consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.
The state justified its law by pointing to historical limitations on dangerous people's ability to own firearms. The court agreed that historically, legislators have been afforded the ability to prohibit firearms from dangerous people such as felons but that Maryland's HQL requirement is not similar.
"The historical 'dangerousness' laws targeted people already deemed dangerous by the state and subjected them to penalties if they possessed firearms," Richardson wrote. "Maryland's law burdens all people—even if only temporarily— rather than just a class of people whom the state has already deemed presumptively dangerous."
The state also argued that its law is justified by a historical tradition of laws requiring training for members of the militia, pointing to founding-era law requiring all non-disabled men of a certain age to participate in the militia and generally required members of the militia to provide their own weapons and show up for regular training.
"These militia laws never conditioned keeping or bearing arms on participation in militia training," Richardson wrote. "These laws imposed a service obligation on militiamen, not gun owners."
U.S. Circuit Judge Steven Agee, a George W. Bush appointee, joined Richardson, while Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Barbara Milano Keenan, a Barack Obama appointee, dissented, finding the majority misinterpreted Breun.
"The majority bases its holding on the premise that if a law affects a prospective handgun purchaser's ability to obtain a handgun 'now,' the law is presumptively unconstitutional," Keenan wrote. "The majority's hyperaggressive view of the Second Amendment would render presumptively unconstitutional most non-discretionary laws in this country requiring a permit to purchase a handgun."
Attorneys representing the state and the challengers did not respond to requests for comment.
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