Courts strike down gun control measures in two states
In the wake of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that significantly limited what the government can do to restrict guns, Democratic-led states have scrambled to skirt the ruling’s limits or push the limits. to test. Some have approved new gun restrictions. Oregon has even passed a ballot initiative to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines.
But this week, supporters of the new gun measures faced a number of setbacks, underscoring the positive impact of the court ruling.
On Tuesday a panel of three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, ruled that a decade-old Maryland law regarding handgun licensing requirements was unconstitutional.
On the same day, a state judge in southeastern Oregon concluded that a ballot initiative approved by voters in 2022 that would ban high-capacity magazines and require background checks and training to obtain gun permits violated the state constitution.
For the Gun Owners of America, a Virginia lobbying group that has been active in lawsuits, the twin statements merited a news alert distributed to its members that “heralded good news for gun rights advocates to celebrate this Thanksgiving!”
In an email, Erich Pratt, the group’s senior vice president, said he was “excited” by the Oregon ruling and found the Maryland ruling “equally encouraging.”
“Ultimately, more and more Americans are realizing that their security cannot be entrusted to the government,” Pratt said, citing a new poll from NBC News showing that gun ownership has risen to record levels.
Legal scholars were more cautious about what the latest rulings meant, noting that other recent court rulings, such as in Illinois, and arguments in a new gun case before the Supreme Court suggested there was still some momentum for gun violence prevention laws.
Still, they said this week’s decisions reinforced an undeniable trend in which judges, especially those appointed by Republican presidents, were interpreting the Second Amendment as broadly as possible.
“It’s part of the zeitgeist of the courts saying we should take the right to keep and bear arms more seriously than we have been,” said Jacob D. Charles, a law professor at Pepperdine University. regulations for tracked weapons and judicial decisions. “There have been examples over the past year and a half where lower court rulings have repeatedly and significantly read the Second Amendment quite extensively and struck down laws that before Bruen were never thought to be unconstitutional.”
Bruen refers to the Supreme Court case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruenwhich has quickly become the shorthand reference for the fight over gun control, just as Dobbs and Roe have become shorthand in the abortion debate.
In its June 2022 6-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court dramatically changed the standard for firearms restrictions. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas asserted that gun laws should be judged not based on the longstanding practice of weighing gun rights against the public interest, but based on the text of the Second Amendment and its “historical tradition ” of gun regulation.
Since then, lower courts have struggled to track down references to obscure or since-forgotten regulations in attempts to assess historical tradition. One federal judge in Indiana compared the assessment of constitutionality from gun laws to a “historical game ‘Where’s Waldo?’”
Earlier this month, during oral arguments, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared willing to consider narrowing the scope of the Bruen case in a new case. United States v Rahimiand enforce a federal law disarming domestic violence.
The aftermath of Bruen has also led to a wave of lawsuits challenging various gun laws, with more than 450 decisions seeking to interpret the case, according to Giffords, a gun control group.
The new laws that are now being litigated in court take different forms.
For example, New York has passed a law that seeks to prevent people from carrying weapons in “sensitive locations” such as Times Square, public transportation, sporting venues and places of worship. The law has caused confusion and led to numerous lawsuits.
Illinois banned high-powered weapons in January, in response to a July 4, 2022, mass shooting in Highland Park. This month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, based in Chicago, has upheld that ban.
Preliminary investigation indicates that Republican-appointed judges will be much more likely to strike down gun control laws after Bruen, said one of the paper’s authors, Eric Ruben, a law professor at Southern Methodist University.
That was the case with Maryland this week, when the federal appeals court split 2-1, with an appointee of former President Donald J. Trump writing the majority opinion.
In a rackRandy Kozuch, executive director of the Institute for Legislative Action at the National Rifle Association, said, “The Fourth Circuit Court’s decision to overturn Maryland’s restrictive gun licensing law sends a clear message: the fundamental right of the law-abiding Marylanders’ right to self-defense should not be violated.”
Oregon was different because it involved the state constitution and not the Second Amendment. But in rural Harney County, where almost 85 percent of voters said no Following the ballot initiative that imposed new licensing requirements and banned high-capacity magazines, Judge Robert S. Raschio concluded that the red flags about gun ownership were partly misplaced.
While mass shootings “have a significant impact on the psyche of America,” they are actually “very low in frequency” and are “sensationalized by the media,” he said in his ruling.
In a statement, Democrat Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum vowed to appeal and expressed confidence the state would win. The case could ultimately be heard by a state Supreme Court, whose seven members are all appointed by a Democratic governor.
Eric Tirschwell, executive director and chief litigation officer of Everytown Law, described the post-Bruen period as “a game of ping-pong, where one day one side wins, the next day the other wins, and what we need is additional clarity of Supreme Court.”
He added: “You can look at the last two days and say, ‘Yes, there are two decisions that are unfortunate and wrong and will probably be reversed.’ If you zoom out to the last 30 days, there have been some very positive signs in terms of gun safety and gun safety laws.”