The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Friday to uphold a provision of state law requiring most Maryland residents to obtain a firearm license before purchasing a handgun.
“This is a great day for Maryland and for common-sense gun safety,” Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement Friday. “We must ensure guns stay out of the hands of those who are not allowed, under our laws, to carry them.”
The 14-2 decision from the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rejected the notion in the case Maryland Shall Issue v. Wes Moore that requiring residents to apply for and obtain a handgun license violates the Second Amendment.
The lawsuit was initially filed against former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, in 2017. It challenged a 2013 law signed by former Gov. Martin O’Malley that requires people to submit fingerprints, undergo a background check and complete a training course before they can purchase a handgun.
It is also illegal to sell, rent, gift or transfer a firearm to a person without a license under that law.
Last November, a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled this provision of the law unconstitutional in a split 2-1 decision. Friday’s ruling overturns that decision.
To receive a handgun qualification license, applicants must be Maryland residents aged 21 or older. They are required to pass a firearm safety course and undergo a background check to ensure they aren’t prohibited from owning a gun under state or federal law. The licenses are issued by the Maryland State Police. They must also not be prohibited under state or federal law from gun ownership.
The application review process can take up to 30 days.
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen that a New York law that required people applying for permits to carry guns in public to demonstrate “proper cause” to successfully receive a concealed carry permit was unconstitutional. This also disrupted the licensing process in Maryland, California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island.
Under that decision, the Supreme Court ruled that gun laws must be analogous to those that were in place during the founding of the United States.
U.S. Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit Judge Barbara Milano Keenan, who wrote Friday’s opinion, said that Maryland’s licensing law is constitutional because it operates to ensure that people seeking to purchase firearms are law-abiding.
Mark Pennak of Maryland Shall Issue said the organization plans to file a petition to have the decision reviewed.
“The Fourth Circuit today rejected our constitutional challenge to Maryland’s Handgun Qualification License requirement, holding that the law did not even infringe on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms,” Maryland Shall Issue wrote in a statement posted to X. “We believe that holding is contrary to controlling Supreme Court precedent and is plainly wrong as a matter of common sense. The majority opinion is, in the words of the dissent, ‘baseless.'”
