A federal appeals court upheld Maryland's decade-old handgun licensing law Friday, saying that since it requires that the government issue a license to any law-abiding person, it does not infringe on the Second Amendment.
The majority of the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments from gun-rights groups that the state's handgun qualification license law, or HQL statute, infringes on the Second Amendment because it delays a person's right to get a gun.
"We reject the plaintiffs' argument that any delay resulting from compliance with the HQL statute qualifies as 'infringement,'" Judge Barbara Milano Keenan wrote in the majority opinion for the 14-2 court.
"By equating 'infringement' with any temporary delay, the plaintiffs improperly discount the Supreme Court's guidance 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," Keenan wrote.
Judge Julius N. Richardson disagreed with the majority's "contrived reading of the Second Amendment's plain text" – that people have a right to bear arms and that the licensing infringes on that.
"Because Maryland's law regulates protected conduct under the amendment's text, and because Maryland has identified no historical basis for its law, I would hold that it violates the Second Amendment," Richardson wrote in his dissent.
Maryland Shall Issue, one of the gun-rights groups that challenged the law, said Friday that an appeal to the Supreme Court is all but certain.
"We believe that holding is contrary to controlling Supreme Court precedent and is plainly wrong as a matter of common sense," Maryland Shall Issue President Mark Pennak said from a prepared statement. "The majority opinion is, in the words of the dissent, 'baseless.' The petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court practically writes itself.
"I'm virtually certain that we will be taking it to the Supreme Court," he said. "This is a no-brainer."
But Attorney General Anthony Brown (D) welcomed the court's decision, calling it "a great day for Maryland and common-sense gun safety."
"We must ensure guns stay out of the hands of those who are not allowed, under our laws, to carry them. The application for a gun license and the required training and background check, are all critical safety checks," Brown said in a statement.
"Common-sense gun safety laws protect all Marylanders and can prevent tragedies that leave our communities scarred and broken from ever happening in the first place," his statement said. "I have said it before and I will say it again, hopes and wishes do not stop deadly violence from erupting on our streets, but common-sense gun laws can."
The HQL was part of the Firearm Safety Act that state lawmakers passed in 2013, in response to the mass shooting a year earlier at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut where 20 children and six adults were killed.
The handgun license 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 could be issued within 30 days, but the court said it typically takes half that time and some licenses can be issued within days.
In 2016, Maryland Shall Issue was joined by Atlantic Guns Inc., a Montgomery County retailer, and two individuals challenging the law as an unconstitutional violation of their Second Amendment rights.
A federal district judge rejected their argument and upheld the law in August 2021, sparking an appeal to the 4th Circuit. But while the case was pending the U.S. Supreme Court issued it decision in June 2022 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."
That decision marks a turning point in how government regulates firearms in the United States and spelled the end of Maryland's concealed carry law.
A divided three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled in November that the Maryland law was unconstitutional under Bruen. The full appeals court announced in January that it would reconsider the panel's decision in the HQL case.
Friday's ruling reverses the panel and restores the law, the appeals court reversed the three-judge panel's decision. Milano wrote Maryland's handgun license requirement "fits comfortably within Bruen's criteria for a constitutional shall-issue licensing regime."
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