Good Day for Gun Rights from the 4th Circuit

[btq96r]

I'm still reading and digesting all the info, but this is a good day for gun rights, even if it isn't an outright denial of overreach since they only kicked it back.  It seems the aftereffects of Heller and McDonald are felt in this one.  Some very valid logic was applied, and it's worth special attention that the Chief Judge of the Circuit who wrote the majority opinion was appointed by President Clinton in 1998.

 

A federal appeals court on Thursday cast doubt on the legality of Maryland’s 2013 ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines passed after the mass shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

 

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit sends the gun-control law back to a lower court for review because it “implicates the core protection of the Second Amendment.”

 

In its majority opinion, written by Chief Judge William B. Traxler Jr., the court found that the Maryland law “significantly burdens the exercise of the right to arm oneself at home.”

 

 

Read the rest of the story here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/appeals-court-decision-casts-doubt-on-marylands-assault-weapons-ban/2016/02/04/8a234240-cb59-11e5-88ff-e2d1b4289c2f_story.html

 

And the full opinion here:

http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/141945.P.pdf

 

 

The politics/law geek inside me is giddy to dive into this one. ;)

Edited February 4, 2016 by btq96r

[btq96r]

It seems the aftereffects of Heller and McDonald are felt in this one. 

 

The Heller case is refereed nineteen frigging times in the opinion...this is awesome!

[Wingshooter]

Good news.

[Pain103]

 That's great but it really needed to be in a more libtard infested district.

[Hershmeister]

The gun banners continue to lose major court cases.

[btq96r]

I've been skimming the opinion, and so far have found some gems that are as close as poetic as we'll ever see from a court for gun rights.  Here are a few quotes that should make anti-gunners cry:

• In our view, “the right to possess firearms for protection implies a corresponding right” to possess component parts necessary to make the firearms operable. (This was in reference to the magazine restrictions)
• The State’s position flows from a hyper-technical, out-of-context parsing of the Supreme Court’s statement in Heller…The proper standard under Heller is whether the prohibited weapons and magazines are “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes ”as a matter of history and tradition, id. at 625 (emphasis added), not whether the magazines are often actually employed in self-defense incidents.
• More importantly, it is the government’s burden to establish that a particular weapon or activity falls outside the scope of the Second Amendment right…Contrary to the district court’s conclusion, the fact that handguns, bolt-action and other manually-loaded long guns, and, as noted earlier, a few semi-automatic rifles are still available for self-defense does not mitigate this burden.

 

 That's great but it really needed to be in a more libtard infested district.

 

That would have been nice, but Maryland's laws were pretty bad, and this ruling did a lot to put them in their place. 

 

While Maryland is the only egregious anti-gun state in the 4th Circuit, this ruling gives other courts a helluva lot of what is known as persuasive authority in legal terms for other courts to draw from.

[Jonnin]

 That's great but it really needed to be in a more libtard infested district.

 

MD is a pretty horrible state for guns.   You wouldn't want to drive thru it with anything decent that would be legal in TN.   Not sure about the specific district but anything being done for guns in that state is a welcome change no matter what area!

[btq96r]

Not sure about the specific district but anything being done for guns in that state is a welcome change no matter what area!

 

Since this came from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, it applies to any state in their jurisdiction.  That covers Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. 

 

Maryland is the only worry spot on that list, but like you said, their laws were horrible.  So, just the precedent alone of what this ruling says, basically tying the protections from Heller to "assault weapons," (and including magazines) gives us a whole new ballgame if this case law spreads.

[rmiddle]

 That's great but it really needed to be in a more libtard infested district.

 

Do you know anything about the State of Maryland?  It is libtard central.

 

Thanks

Robert

[btq96r]

I tried not to get too optimistic when the panel came out with the ruling they did, knowing it was far from the end of the road. The State of Maryland exercised their appeal option, and after enough Judges agreed to hear it, the full Fourth Circuit will take up this case, and I can only hope that the same ruling will follow, as the Heller and McDonald cases are supposed to be binding precedent.

Cross your fingers that all that good stuff we saw in the panel opinion carries the day on May 11th.

March 4 at 10:11 PM
MARYLAND
Appeals court plans to reconsider gun ban
A federal appeals court announced Friday that it will rehear a case involving Maryland’s 2013 ban on semiautomatic high-capacity assault weapons.
Last month, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit cast doubt on the legality of the state’s ban, passed after the mass shootings at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school.
The 2-to-1 decision would have sent the gun-control law back to a lower court for review.
Instead, a majority of eligible judges voted to revisit the law this spring. Oral arguments are scheduled for May 11 at the Richmond-based appeals court.
The law, which remains in effect, bans the possession or sale of more than 45 types of assault weapons.
— Ann E. Marimow
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/us-appeals-court-will-reconsider-md-ban-on-assault-weapons/2016/03/04/a7a0beb4-e239-11e5-846c-10191d1fc4ec_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-local%3Ahomepage%2Fcard

Edited March 5, 2016 by btq96r

[btq96r]

Here's the audio from the En Banc hearing from earlier this month if anyone is interested.  I'm going to give it a listen sometime this weekend.  Very cool for the court to make it available online.

http://coop.ca4.uscourts.gov/OAarchive/mp3/14-1945-20160511.mp3

From what the trends of the other En Banc cases seems to be, we can expect an opinion in 4-7 months (probably varies for recesses during the year).

[btq96r]

23 hours ago, btq96r said:

I'm going to give it a listen sometime this weekend.

 

Just got done listening to it...very close as far as I "scored" it. 

I think the lawyer for the pro-gun side failed to make the case that assault weapons are popular enough to be warranted the same protections as handguns under Heller.  He stumbled a bit, and I think he pushed the "lawful purposes" line a bit too much.  He was looking to add it as often as he could, even when it didn't seem to fit to the topic.  There were obviously some of the judges out to discredit his argument out of an anti-gun, or pro-legislature mindset, but that was to be expected.  

The attorney for Maryland was checked pretty hard on a lot of issues.  Of particular note was how assault weapons can be banned under the justification of public safety because they are prolific in mass shootings, but handguns, which account for 94% of murders overall can't be banned after Heller.  Also mentioned during the defense time was the recent SCOTUS case on stun guns, which I found interesting.

In all, I think this one will be close.  I couldn't make out more than a half dozen voices, so that's a lot of judges that sit quietly listening.  Cross your fingers folks...if Maryland's AWB can be ruled unconstitutional, any AWB can be.

[btq96r]

En Banc results released today...sorry to say gun rights lost.  I'm still unpacking this, and it'll take a bit with all I have going on this week, but this part near the begining says it all.

Quote

We conclude— contrary to the now- vacated decision of our prior panel— that the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are not protected by the Second Amendment. That is, we are convinced that the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are among those arms that are “like” “M-16 rifles” —“weapons that are most useful in military service”— which the Heller Court singled out as being beyond the Second Amendment’s reach. See 554 U.S. at 627 (rejecting the notion that the Second Amendment safeguards “M-16 rifles and the like”). Put simply, we have no power to extend Second Amendment protection to the weapons of war that the Heller decision explicitly excluded from such coverage.  Nevertheless, we also find it prudent to rule that— even if the banned assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are somehow entitled to Second Amendment protection— the district court properly subjected the FSA to intermediate scrutiny and correctly upheld it as constitutional under that standard of review.

Basically, they said assault weapons (as the government defines them), & magazines are not protected by the 2nd Amendment because they're weapons of war, and that intermediate scrutiny, not strict scrutiny was good enough even if they were when cases like this come up.

I hope that this is appealed, that SCOTUS takes it up, and puts commonly used/produced assault weapons under 2A via the Heller standard.

Sad day, friends.

[Oh Shoot]

Thanks for digging that thread  back up for the report. Alas.

- OS

[Worriedman]

Funny, United states v. Miller says weapons of war ARE covered, and only them.
 

Quote

some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia." Id., at 178. The Second Amendment, it was held, "must be interpreted and applied" with the view of maintaining a "militia."

Which is it?