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.
The problem is that you’ve got no way of keeping guns outside the law in the US right now. The government can run a gun buyback program, but they can’t stop the sale of new guns as long as the 2nd amendment remains part of the US constitution. Following Australia’s lead without criminalizing most gun ownership just turns any gun buyback program into a government-sponsored trade in of older models for a down payment on newer ones.
There are ways, it just requires Federal law makers to actually have balls. Unfortunately, Federal law is woefully insufficient - whether it be in writing legislation or Supreme Court rulings. States can’t make effective laws, because poorly written Federal laws and a politically stacked Supreme Court can easily circumvent them.
Even more unfortunately, it’s most likely that conservatives will unravel Federal law, but only for their benefit. They’ve already been practising their “Convention of the States”. Furthermore, state governments are predominantly Republican, in a disproportionate misrepresentation of the US population.
And that last part is the key problem: we have a “representative” democracy. We vote for someone to go to Washington and make/vote on laws on our behalf. This made sense 100 years ago, when it took forever to travel and communicate. Now, technology gives us the ability to communicate with almost anyone else in the world instantly. We need a direct democracy, where everyone gets to have their say, as much as they want to.
Furthermore, people shouldn’t just have the opportunity to vote on what kind of laws should be made, but on the individual fleshed out law itself, and also in review of laws both before they’re enacted and after they’ve had some time to play out. Disinformation campaigns have proven effective for very occassional votes, but they cannot be maintained indefinately. We need to make it hard to manipulate voting.
We need to go back to thinking about democracy in such a way as to make it bullet proof. If you look at the UK, they vote with pencils - all because there is the remote possibility of replacing a pen with one that has disappearing ink. That’s the kind of abject paranoia we need to be implementing.
lol no. Voting with pencils is because they’re cheap, abundant, don’t leak, don’t smudge when folding the ballot paper. It’s recommendation, not a law No nonsense about disappearing ink.
Source: Am from UK and have voted with a pen (blue, black, green and red ink) and a pencil.
Check yourself.
You can bring your own pen to vote in the UK, that’s fine. However the utensil they provide is always a pencil, for the exact reason I gave.
I’m also in the UK, and I normally use Pilot Frixion pens.
Edit: Argos use pens. Pens are cheaper than pencils.
FYI Frixion pens erase with heat. If the ballot is exposed to the temperature of, say, a blow-dryer, or is left to bake in the sun, the marks will fade.
Learned that when I tried to laminate a document I handwrote with a Frixion pen and out came a blank laminated piece of paper.
Yup, I’m aware, and your username is particularly poignant. I always worried that my exams would be left on top of a stove and all my work would be erased. Thankfully that never happened, though.