The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a 2013 Maryland law that requires a state license for anyone seeking to buy a handgun. Gun-rights groups challenged the law, claiming that it infringed on their Second Amendment rights to bear arms. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August that the gun advocates were confusing a delay in getting guns that may result from the state license requirement with an infringement of constitutional rights, Maryland Matters reports. The Supreme Court let that ruling stand. Attorney General Anthony Brown called Monday’s decision “great news” for the state and “common-sense gun laws.” “This law helps prevent tragedies and keeps families safe, by keeping guns away from those who want to harm our communities,” Brown said. “Thoughts and prayers are not enough — Maryland’s Handgun Qualification Licensing Law is a key tool in our fight to end gun violence.” Mark Pennak of Maryland Shall Issue, one of the gun-rights groups that challenged the law, said there are other appeals of Second Amendment cases still pending before the high court, including one from Maryland. “We wait,” Pennak said.
The state’s handgun qualification license law, known as HQL, was part of the Firearm Safety Act that state lawmakers passed in 2013 in response to a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were killed. The law requires a person who wishes to buy a handgun to apply for a license. The applicant must be a state resident and at least 21 years old, must submit fingerprints, undergo a background check, satisfy training requirements and pay a $50 application fee. A license should be issued within 30 days. The appeals court said it typically takes half that time and some licenses can be issued within days. In the majority opinion for the full court, which ruled 14-2 in favor of the law, Judge Barbara Milano Keenan wrote that “requirements such as background checks and training instruction, which necessarily occasion some delay, ordinarily will pass constitutional muster without requiring the government to justify the regulation.” Judge Julius Richardson wrote in dissent that the majority’s reading of the Second Amendment was “contrived” and that the majority could offer no support for its reasoning. Richardson wrote the majority should follow the Supreme Court’s framework in its 2022 New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen case which required modern gun laws to be “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”