Supreme Court turns away challenge to Maryland handgun license regime

The Supreme Court let Maryland’s handgun licensing regime stand, turning away a long-running Second Amendment challenge in a brief order issued Monday.

A group of gun owners, a gun rights group and a firearms store sued over Maryland’s law, arguing the requirements burden their constitutional rights.

They told the justices their intervention was needed to prevent lower courts from misapplying the court’s recent expansion of Second Amendment rights in NYSRPA v. Bruen, which held that gun laws must be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

“But certain lower courts — determined to avoid applying Bruen’s holding — are disregarding this Court’s precedents and straining the constitutional text to fit desired policy ends,” their petition reads.

“That is exactly what the en banc Fourth Circuit did in this case to uphold Maryland’s ahistorical and burdensome two-step licensing and registration scheme for acquisition and possession of a handgun for self-defense,” it continued.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in Connecticut that killed 20 children and six adults, Maryland enacted legislation in 2013 strengthening its firearm licensing requirements.

The state now requires most prospective handgun owners to first attend a four-hour training course, provide their fingerprints, complete a background check and pay an application fee, among other requirements.

Amid a changing Second Amendment legal landscape, the plaintiffs’ lawsuit has been winding through the courts since it was first brought in 2016.

Ultimately, the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 14-2 decision in August upheld Maryland’s law, finding the regime was a “shall-issue” licensing system that did not infringe upon Second Amendment rights.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) urged the justices to let the law stand by turning away the appeal.

“Should this Court wish to revisit its shall-issue discussion, it will be best positioned to do so after litigants and courts in other cases have more fully developed the relevant legal and factual arguments through the adversarial process. Apart from this case, that benefit is virtually nonexistent today,” Maryland’s attorney general’s office wrote in court filings.

The court on Monday also turned away a Second Amendment challenge to Delaware’s ban on certain semiautomatic weapons.

It’s the latest in a series of refusals to get involved in the issue, after the justices previously declined to take up challenges to similar laws in Maryland and Illinois.

But the court is still weighing a second request to hear the dispute over Maryland’s ban. Unlike the other cases, the justices took no action on that petition in Monday’s order list.

They also took no action on a petition challenging Rhode Island’s ban on high-capacity magazines under the Second Amendment. Both were on the list for consideration at the justices' most recent closed-door conference.

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