A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected arguments by gun rights advocates that Maryland's ban on assault-style rifles such as AR-15s was unconstitutional, despite a 2022 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that expanded gun rights.
The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a 10-5 vote held that a decade-old assault weapons ban enacted in response to mass shootings and other gun violence does not violate the right to keep and bear arms under the U.S. Constitution's 2nd Amendment.
The ruling came in one of two major 2nd Amendment cases decided by the full 4th Circuit on Tuesday. In a separate opinion, the court in a 13-2 vote reversed a West Virginia federal judge's ruling that found a federal ban on possessing a gun with its serial number removed was unconstitutional.
Gun rights groups in the Maryland case argued that under a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Americans have a right to possess arms that are in common use, including the popular AR-15.
But U.S. Circuit Judge Harvie Wilkinson wrote 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."
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat who defended the law, welcomed the ruling. "The court’s decision today will save lives," he said in a statement.
The opinion by Wilkinson, an appointee of Republican former President Ronald Reagan, was joined by all of the court's appointees of Democratic presidents and drew a dissent by five Republican appointees led by U.S. Circuit Judge Julius Richardson, who called the ban unconstitutional.
"The Second Amendment is not a second-class right subject to the whimsical discretion of federal judges," Richardson wrote. "Its mandate is absolute and, applied here, unequivocal."
The Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation, two gun rights groups that challenged the law, in statements vowed to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case and to declare any such bans on assault weapons unconstitutional.
Maryland enacted its assault weapons ban in 2013 after a shooter used a semi-automatic rifle in the 2012 mass killing of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
While the ban had survived prior court challenges at the 4th Circuit, the court was directed by the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider the issue after its 6-3 conservative majority changed the landscape of firearms regulation in its landmark 2022 decision.
The case is Bianchi v. Brown, 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 21-1255.
For the Maryland plaintiffs: Peter Patterson of Cooper & Kirk
For Maryland: Robert Scott of the Office of the Maryland Attorney General
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