A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down Maryland’s handgun licensing law, finding that its requirements, which include submitting fingerprints for a background check and taking a four-hour firearms safety course, are unconstitutionally restrictive.

In a 2-1 ruling, judges on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond said they considered the case in light of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that “effected a sea change in Second Amendment law.”

The underlying lawsuit was filed in 2016 as a challenge to a Maryland law requiring people to obtain a special license before purchasing a handgun. The law, which was passed in 2013 in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, laid out a series of necessary steps for would-be gun purchasers: completing four hours of safety training that includes firing one live round, submitting fingerprints and passing a background check, being 21 and residing in Maryland.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, said he was disappointed in the circuit court’s ruling and will “continue to fight for this law.” He said his administration is reviewing the ruling and considering its options.

  • @[email protected]
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    81 year ago

    Yeah. It’s too bad we are stuck with this albatross of 2A making it impossible to put reasonable restrictions on gun ownership. Clearly that was a mistake.

    • @RaoulDook
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      -51 year ago

      You are wrong, and it’s good that we have such strong protections on our inherent rights to effective self defense.

      Fortunately, there’s nothing you can do about it as well.

      • @Stovetop
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        11 year ago

        The longer guns continue being a problem, the likelier we get to electing the legislative body needed to pass a new amendment canceling the 2A in its entirety. The longer it stands, the harder it gets to pass the compromise measures needed to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people, and so the problem keeps getting worse.

        • @[email protected]
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          61 year ago

          Can’t wait for only billionaires and their armed thugs to be the only ones able to defend themselves

        • @FireTower
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          21 year ago

          Unenumeration of a once recognized right, wouldn’t give congress the authority to inhibit people from practicing that right.

          The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. -9th Amendment

        • @RaoulDook
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          21 year ago

          You should really read up about the amendment process. It’s not something that Congress can do by itself, it requires 75% of the 50 states to ratify it after the initial hurdles. It’s not going to happen, because there will always be at least 13+ states that will vote to keep the 2nd Amendment, and that’s a good thing. You should be happy that our rights are safe, because it’s pretty fuckin’ hard to get new rights, you know they don’t just hand out new ones regularly.

        • @[email protected]
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          -21 year ago

          A different Supreme Court could redecide settled law just like Roe v Wade. If 2A needs to die to keep guns out of dangerous hands, then it needs to die. The absolute refusal to compromise means eventually they’ll lose everything. Okay.

          I don’t have a problem with responsible gun ownership. You’d think they’d make some compromises to soften the resolve of the anti-gun crowd. I wouldn’t be with them if we had sane laws, but here we all are.

          • TWeaK
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            11 year ago

            The problem is that US law is ridiculously and unnecessarily convoluted. There’s Federal law, which is supposed to be comprehensive but intentionally has holes in it that State law is supposed to flesh out for themselves. However Federal law overrules state law, meaning that State law can only ever fit inside Federal law.

            This leads to Federal law being lazily written, such that it covers a far wider breadth than it was ever intended. Meanwhile, when States try to write their own laws to fill in the gap, they get overruled by Federal law.

            If you have a Federal legislative body - Congress, the people who are supposed to write laws - in perpetual turmoil, and a Supreme Court that is politically stacked, then you can easily invent case law to twist whatever legislation was written decades or centuries ago into whatever you desire.

            And all of this glosses over the fact that US law is written in horrible language. I dread to think the fit that a modern grammatical spell checker would go through if you copy/pasted the law into it, with how the sentence structure is drawn on with commas and bullshit. If Clippy were still around, he would’ve been bent so far out of shape he could hack a Nintendo Switch. Yet, because it’s at the Federal level, which is detracted further from the people, there isn’t enough of a public incentive to have it written plainly so that everyone could understand it.

            You don’t get a vote on laws, you get a vote on “representatives” who vote on laws on your behalf based on their financial backers.

      • @[email protected]
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        01 year ago

        Astounding how the “well regulated” part of the second amendment is simply washed away by gun zealots.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        You are wrong, and it’s good that we have such strong protections on our inherent rights to effective self defense.

        “Good” how? Because it makes your pee pee tingly? Americans are less safe from criminals, tyrants and the monthly “legal gun owner opening fire on a crowd” than anyone in comparable countries.

        Fortunately, there’s nothing you can do about it as well.

        Make buying a gun without proper checks and training a felony, remove the guns as evidence of a crime, try those responsible in a court and if they’re convicted, congratulations, you’re now a felon who has been shown due process then stripped of their rights.

        Or just stop voting Republican. Personally, I don’t care if “responsible gun owners” want to die in a hail of bullets after shooting at innocent people, just because it was democratically decided that the “responsible” part shouldn’t be voluntary.

        After all, would we even notice a difference? Legal gun owners are already responsible for 80% of mass shootings.

        • @RaoulDook
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          21 year ago

          Why are you bringing your weird penis thoughts into a discussion about the constitutional rights of US citizens? Keep that to yourself, because it’s gross.

            • @RaoulDook
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              31 year ago

              It’s just a tell about your psychological viewpoint when you immediately associate penises with guns and try to use that as a form of insult.