Tuesday’s ruling by a federal appeals court upheld Maryland’s prohibition on some semiautomatic guns, giving gun control activists a victory in a closely followed Second Amendment issue.
The whole 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined by a vote of 10 to 5 that Maryland’s law conforms with the recent expansion of gun rights by the Supreme Court.
“We decline to wield the Constitution to declare that military-style armaments which have become primary instruments of mass killing and terrorist attacks in the United States are beyond the reach of our nation’s democratic processes,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote for the majority.
Already, one plaintiff has sworn to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. Following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2013, which claimed the lives of 20 children and 6 adults, Maryland passed the legislation.
The law forbids owning or dealing in assault weapons, which are defined as a wide range of firearms including the AR-15, AK-47, and semiautomatic rifles with large capacity magazines. Violations are crimes that have a maximum sentence of three years in jail.
The 4th Circuit had upheld the law, but the Supreme Court sent the case back for another look after the 6-3 conservative majority issued an expansion of Second Amendment rights two years ago.
The court found in NYSRPA v. Bruen that for gun control laws to be deemed constitutional, they must be in line with the country’s longstanding history of regulating firearms.
Former Reagan appointee Wilkinson claimed that even by that stricter test, Maryland’s law remains constitutional.
“The assault weapons at issue fall outside the ambit of protection offered by the Second Amendment because, in essence, they are military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense,” Wilkinson wrote on behalf of the majority.
“Moreover, the Maryland law fits comfortably within our nation’s tradition of firearms regulation,” the opinion continued. “It is but another example of a state regulating excessively dangerous weapons once their incompatibility with a lawful and safe society becomes apparent, while nonetheless preserving avenues for armed self-defense.”
Wilkinson was not alone in his opinion; eight Democratically appointed judges concurred. Although concurring with the majority conclusion that the law was lawful, one other judge did not adopt its logic.
Republican presidents nominated five of the judges who dissented. In the approximately 100-page dissent, former President Trump’s appointee Judge Julius Richardson stated that the majority “disregards the Founders’ wisdom and replaces it with its own.”
“While history and tradition support the banning of weapons that are both dangerous and unusual, Maryland’s ban cannot pass constitutional muster as it prohibits the possession of arms commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes,” Richardson wrote in a close to 100-page dissent.
“In holding otherwise, the majority grants states historically unprecedented leeway to trammel the constitutional liberties of their citizens.”
One of the gun rights organizations contesting Maryland’s law, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), has vowed to take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court.
“FPC will take the Fourth Circuit’s terrible decision to the Supreme Court without delay. Our objective is simple: End all bans on so-called ‘assault weapons’ nationwide. And we look forward to doing just that,” FPC President Brandon Combs stated.
The justices declined to take up the matter when they rejected a challenge to a similar Illinois legislation last month, and the court declined to become involved in the case at an earlier stage.
