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Federal court upholds Maryland training, background checks for handguns

By Rachel Weiner, the Washington Post

August 26, 2024, 1:27 pm CDT

A federal appeals court has upheld Maryland’s requirement that gun owners first go through firearms training and pass a background check—a ruling issued Friday that crossed ideological lines.

Although there was disagreement on the reasoning, all but two members of the 16-judge court agreed that the state’s permit process is constitutional despite the Supreme Court’s dramatic expansion of gun rights.

Three judges nominated by Republican presidents joined all of the court’s Democratic nominees to say that the Supreme Court, while striking down many gun restrictions in its landmark decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, had explicitly approved laws like the one in Maryland that grant permits to anyone who undergoes some safety-related requirements. The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit also covers North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

“We are not free to ignore the Supreme Court’s clear guidance,” Judge Barbara Milano Keenan, an Obama appointee, wrote for the majority, “nor to unduly constrain legislatures seeking to employ such measures to prevent handgun misuse and violent criminal activity.”

That guidance came in the footnote to the Bruen ruling that said gun laws must fit the country’s “history and tradition” from the 18th or mid-19th century. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that “nothing in our analysis should be interpreted to suggest the unconstitutionality of” permitting laws that require applicants to “undergo a background check or pass a firearms safety course.” He noted that nearly every state in the country has such a law on the book.

Opponents argued that the footnote was not a binding part of the law, and that Thomas had gone on to say that such laws could be “abusive” if they require “lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees.” The Maryland process requires four hours of training and a $50 fee; the process can take up to 30 days, and registering the gun can take an additional week. Gun owners must be 21 years old, although the age requirement was not challenged in this suit. (A federal judge in Virginia ruled last year that a national ban on selling handguns to 18-to-20-year-olds was unconstitutional. That ruling is also being appealed to the 4th Circuit.)

A panel of three judges on the 4th Circuit agreed with the advocates opposing Maryland’s permit law. The full court intervened, saying the hurdles were not abusive—especially since most applications take less than a month to be approved. Would-be gun owners who said the cost or the physical discomfort of sitting through training convinced them not to apply for permits, the judges said, did not render the law unconstitutional.

Maryland’s law, passed after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, was intended to crack down on “straw purchasers” who buy guns for people who would not pass a background check. After the 2022 Supreme Court ruling, then-Gov. Larry Hogan (R) removed from state law a requirement that would-be gun owners show “a good and substantial reason” for seeking to carry a concealed weapon.

Maryland has some of the toughest gun-control laws in the country and some of its laws became subject to hundreds of legal challenges launched across the country following the Bruen ruling.

Individuals could claim that the way their permits were handled violated their Second Amendment rights, but advocates had argued that the law was unconstitutional under all circumstances.

Keenan’s opinion was joined by one Republican nominee to the court, J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who wrote a decision earlier this month upholding Maryland’s ban on assault-style weapons. Three other Republican nominees agreed with the judgment but argued that Maryland still had to justify the permitting law with a historic analogue.

“Maryland’s handgun license requirement is sufficiently comparable to historical precursors prohibiting firearm possession on dangerousness grounds,” Judge Allison Rushing, a Trump appointee, wrote.

The National Rifle Association, which backed the litigation in the case known as Maryland Shall Issue, Inc. v. Wes Moore, said in a statement that the law’s opponents “will now consider whether to petition the Supreme Court to” take up the case.