Maryland assault weapons ban upheld by appeals court as sparring over Supreme Court precedent continues

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld Maryland’s ban on assault weapons, with impassioned majority and dissenting opinions that sparred over how recent Supreme Court gun rights precedents should apply to the case.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld Maryland’s ban on assault weapons, with impassioned majority and dissenting opinions that sparred over how recent Supreme Court gun rights precedents should apply to the case. The challenge to Maryland’s law is one of dozens of gun rights lawsuits that have required judges to examine firearms regulations under a stringent, history-focused test that the Supreme Court laid in 2022. While scores of other types of gun regulations have been struck down under the new precedent, the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the ban on semiautomatic weapons did not run afoul of the Constitution. Writing for the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals majority – which was hearing the dispute en banc, meaning before all of its active judges –  Judge Harvie Wilkinson said that “we decline to wield the Constitution to declare that military-style armaments which have become primary instruments of mass killing and terrorist attacks in the United States are beyond the reach of our nation’s democratic processes.” A dissent written by Judge Julius Richardson said that the majority opinion “disregards the Founders’ wisdom and replaces it with its own.” The ruling, Richardson wrote, “grants states historically unprecedented leeway to trammel the constitutional liberties of their citizens.” Having upheld the Maryland ban in 2017, the 4th Circuit was reconsidering the law’s constitutionality in light of the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling known as Bruen that instructed courts to look to history when assessing a gun regulation’s compliance with the Second Amendment. Tuesday’s 4th Circuit opinion also comes on the heels of a Supreme Court opinion this summer where the justices upheld a ban on individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms.