A federal appeals court on Friday upheld Maryland’s rules for obtaining a handgun, rejecting gun-rights groups’ arguments that the permit process infringes on people’s Second Amendment rights.
In a 14–2 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Maryland’s handgun qualification license (HQL) law—which requires submitting fingerprints, passing a background check, and completing four hours of training—is constitutional.
Senior Circuit Judge Barbara Milano Keenan said the law did not infringe on the Second Amendment because it allows any law-abiding person to obtain a handgun qualification license by completing the statutory requirements.
The plaintiffs had argued that any delay resulting from compliance with the HQL statue constitutes an “infringement” on the Second Amendment, but the court rejected this argument.
“By equating ‘infringement’ with any temporary delay, the plaintiffs improperly discount the Supreme Court’s guidance that requirements such as background checks and training instruction, which necessarily occasion some delay, ordinarily will pass constitutional muster without requiring the government to justify the regulation at step two,” Keenan stated.
The judge said the plaintiffs have failed to rebut the law’s presumption of constitutionality because they “have not met their burden to show that the HQL statute ‘infringes’ the Second Amendment right.”
In his dissent, Judge Julius Richardson said that the “historical tradition of prohibiting dangerous people from owning firearms does not justify Maryland’s law” because the state bars everyone from acquiring handguns until they prove they are not dangerous.
“Because Maryland’s law regulates protected conduct under the amendment’s text, and because Maryland has identified no historical basis for its law, I would hold that it violates the Second Amendment,” he stated.
“We believe that holding is contrary to controlling Supreme Court precedent and is plainly wrong as a matter of common sense,“ it stated. ”The majority opinion is, in the words of the dissent, ‘baseless.’”
Maryland’s HQL law was enacted in 2013 in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. The court’s full roster of judges agreed to hear the case after a three-judge panel ruled 2–1 last year that the requirements were unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown welcomed the appeals court’s decision, saying that “common-sense gun safety laws” can prevent unwanted tragedies.
“I have said it before and I will say it again, hopes and wishes do not stop deadly violence from erupting on our streets, but common-sense laws can.”
