The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up an appeal of a circuit court decision that upheld a 12-year-old Maryland law that requires licenses and training for would-be handgun buyers in the state. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty images)
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to a 2013 Maryland law that requires a state license for anyone seeking to buy a handgun.
Gun-rights groups had challenged the law, claiming that it infringed on their Second Amendment rights to bear arms. But the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August that the gun advocates were confusing a delay in getting guns, that may result from the state license requirement, with an infringement of constitutional rights.
The Supreme Court let that ruling stand when it denied, without comment, the appeal of the circuit court ruling.
Attorney General Anthony Brown (D) called Monday’s decision “great news” for the state and “common-sense gun laws.”
“This law helps prevent tragedies and keeps families safe, by keeping guns away from those who want to harm our communities,” Brown said. “Thoughts and prayers are not enough — Maryland’s Handgun Qualification Licensing Law is a key tool in our fight to end gun violence.”
Mark Pennak, president of Maryland Shall Issue, one of the gun-rights groups that challenged the law, conceded nothing can be done with the high court’s rejection of this appeal. But he said there are other appeals of Second Amendment cases still pending before the court, including one from Maryland that he hopes the Supreme Court will take up.
“We wait,” Pennak said. “If the Supreme Court were to come out in another Second Amendment case and rule that’s totally wrong, we will then file a new lawsuit.”
In terms of the federal appeals court decision, Pennake said, “Based on infringement unless the restriction is a total ban, we just think that’s totally and completely wrong.”
The state’s handgun qualification license law, also known as HQL, was part of the Firearm Safety Act that state lawmakers passed in 2013. It was done in response to a mass shooting one year earlier at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were killed.
The law requires a person who wishes to buy a handgun to apply for a license. The applicant must be a state resident and at least 21 years old, must submit fingerprints, undergo a background check, satisfy training requirements and pay a $50 application fee.
A license should be issued within 30 days, but the circuit court said it typically takes half that time and some licenses can be issued within days.
In the majority opinion in August for full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled 14-2 in favor of the law, Circuit Judge Barbara Milano Keenan wrote 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.”
But Judge Julius N. Richardson wrote in a dissent that the majority’s reading of the Second Amendment was “contrived” and that the majority could offer no support for its reasoning.
Richardson wrote the majority should follow the Supreme Court’s framework in its June 2022 decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which required modern gun laws to be “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
“It is disheartening that our Court has gone out of its way to avoid applying the framework announced in Bruen,” Richardson wrote. “I can only hope that in future cases we will reverse course and assess firearm regulations against history and tradition.”