{"id":103908,"date":"2024-08-26T16:24:54","date_gmt":"2024-08-26T21:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=103908"},"modified":"2024-08-26T16:24:54","modified_gmt":"2024-08-26T21:24:54","slug":"103908","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=103908","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fourth Circuit ignores Bruen again<\/a><\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s 2022 Bruen decision\u00a0held,<\/a>\u00a0with crystal clarity, the Second Amendment is an individual right, which extends to keeping and bearing arms not only in one\u2019s home or on one\u2019s property, but in public, with some limited exceptions. Not only did Bruen reaffirm the Second Amendment as a fundamental unalienable right–no second-class right\u2014it established strict scrutiny, the highest level of judicial analysis, for Second Amendment cases. Equally important was this holding:<\/p>\n

When the<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0Second Amendment<\/a>\u2019s plain text covers an individual\u2019s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual\u2019s conduct falls outside the<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0Second Amendment<\/a>\u2019s \u201cunqualified command.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, anti-liberty\/gun schemes are only constitutional if there was a clear historical analogue\u00a0at the time of the founding.\u00a0\u00a0As one might suspect, some states\u2014Like Maryland\u2014are determined to ignore the Second Amendment and Bruen.<\/p>\n

Under current Maryland law,\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0no one may own, rent,\u00a0or even touch a firearm\u00a0<\/em>without a 16-hour class which includes live fire. There is an 8-hour class required for each permit renewal. Only upon passing the 16-hour course, can one\u00a0apply<\/em>\u00a0for a permit, and the State Police have 30 days to approve or deny applications. So while Maryland is, at least ostensibly, a \u201cshall-issue\u201d state the state puts as many barriers as possible in the path of gun owners, including a seven day waiting period for purchase,\u00a0and gun registration.<\/p>\n

In 2023 a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals took up a challenge to the licensing law and struck it down in consonance with Bruen:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenged law restricts the ability of law-abiding adult citizens to possess handguns, and the state has not presented a historical analogue that justifies its restriction; indeed, it has seemingly admitted that it couldn\u2019t find one.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On would reasonably think that would have been the end of it. No historical analogue, presumptively unconstitutional. Then the entire Court got into the act (decision available here<\/a>):<\/p>\n

We conclude that the Supreme Court in Bruen foreclosed the plaintiffs\u2019 \u201ctemporary deprivation\u201d argument by stating that, despite some delay occasioned by \u201cshall-issue\u201d permit processes, this type of licensing law is presumptively constitutional because it operates merely to ensure that individuals seeking to exercise their Second Amendment rights are \u201claw-abiding\u201d persons. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

We hold that the plaintiffs have failed to rebut this presumption of constitutionality afforded to \u201cshall-issue\u201d licensing laws like the handgun qualification statute. So the plaintiffs\u2019 challenge to the HQL statute fails, and we affirm the district court\u2019s award of summary judgment to the state of Maryland.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

The Court\u2019s convoluted logic\u00a0goes like this:\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

In Bruen the Supreme Court ruled \u201cshall-issue\u201d carry licenses are legal. Maryland only grudgingly changed from \u201cmay-issue,\u201d which means few, if any will get permits, to \u201c\u201dshall-issue\u201d after Bruen. Since shall-issue\u00a0carry<\/em>\u00a0licensing is legal, shall issue laws regulating the simple possession of handguns must also be legal. The Fourth Circuit also upheld Maryland\u2019s law on the premise that it merely ensures prospective handgun owners are \u201claw-abiding.\u201d The decision ignores Bruen\u2019s historical analogue requirement.<\/p>\n

In sum, background checks under the 77R process and the HQL statute differ because only the HQL statute involves the submission of fingerprints, and the background checks for each process may occur at different points in time. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In light of these distinctions, and because the HQL statute effectively strengthens the 77R process, we reject the plaintiffs\u2019 argument that the HQL statute\u2019s background check is wholly redundant and so abusive as to \u201cinfringe\u201d the Second Amendment right under step one of the Bruen framework.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What Maryland is trying to do, with the help of the Fourth Circuit, is to make gun ownership so burdensome as to discourage it, and self-defense, entirely. In that pursuit, the Fourth Circuit continues to accept patently absurd arguments from the State, and to produce absurd arguments of their own.<\/p>\n

As I recently noted in\u00a0Maryland, AR-15s and the Fourth Circuit\u00a0<\/a>the Court recently upheld a ban on AR-15s, more or less because they\u2019re like military, fully automatic M4s, which of course, they aren\u2019t. As I noted in that article, the Fourth Circuit has established a clear split among the appeals courts on multiple issues of substantial Second Amendment questions. Should the Supreme Court decide to grant cert in its upcoming session, it could choose to substantially clarify many of the issues relating to the Second Amendment it has thus far chosen to avoid.<\/p>\n

That kind of clarity, when the November elections present a choice between traditional American liberty and socialist\/communist totalitarianism, is overdue<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fourth Circuit ignores Bruen again The Supreme Court\u2019s 2022 Bruen decision\u00a0held,\u00a0with crystal clarity, the Second Amendment is an individual right, which extends to keeping and bearing arms not only in one\u2019s home or on one\u2019s property, but in public, with some limited exceptions. Not only did Bruen reaffirm the Second Amendment as a fundamental … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-crap-for-brains","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103909,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103908\/revisions\/103909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}