Courts Strike Down Gun Control Measures in Two States

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 222 points –
Courts Strike Down Gun Control Measures in Two States
nytimes.com

The rulings in Maryland and Oregon come amid a shifting legal landscape in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that has imposed new limits on gun regulation.

In the wake of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that significantly limits what the government can do to restrict guns, states led by Democrats have scrambled to circumvent or test the limits of the ruling. A few have approved new gun restrictions. Oregon even passed a ballot initiative to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines.

But this week, supporters of the new gun measures suffered a pair of setbacks, underscoring the rippling effect of the court’s decision.

On Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., ruled that a 10-year-old Maryland law related to licensing requirements for handguns was unconstitutional.

124

You are viewing a single comment

Under the Maryland law, an applicant for a handgun license must meet four requirements. They must be at least 21 years old, a resident of the state, complete a gun safety course and undergo a background check to ensure they are not barred under federal or state law from owning a firearm.

An applicant must then fill out an application, pay a processing fee, and wait up to 30 days for a state official to issue a license.

The appeals court ruled that requiring applicants to wait up to 30 days for a handgun permit violated the constitutional rights of citizens, and “the law’s waiting period could well be the critical time in which the applicant expects to face danger.”

I fucking hate these cretins in our judiciary.

Critical time where the applicant expects to face danger

I needs my guns the minute I needs them. Vending machines full of guns should be on every street corner so I have access to the firepower and ammunition I need at all times.

Usually if you need a gun that fast something bad is going down because you're angry.

Or it's because you're a minority trying not to be killed by white supremacists...or a 5' 120lb woman with a stalker....but noooo by all means it's just because someone is angry.

Citizens wouldn't be facing so much danger if we didn't have guns everywhere..

I guess abusive partners and family members don't exist outside of America.

Most murders occur by firearm and it's not even close. We're in an arms race with each other to defend ourselves against all the guns that are causing our deaths. It's a dangerous spiral.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-weapon-used/

And guns are part of the tools that abusers use in abusing:

For example, the 8-fold increase in intimate partner femicide risk associated with abusers’ access to firearms attenuated to a 5-fold increase when characteristics of the abuse were considered, including previous threats with a weapon on the part of the abuser. This suggests that abusers who possess guns tend to inflict the most severe abuse.

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.93.7.1089#_i8

A small percentage (5%) of both case and control women lived apart from the abuser and owned a gun, however, and there was no clear evidence of protective effects.

A victim's access to firearms has little effect on their protection, but abuser's access consistently makes abuse worse for the victims.

It's fine to assume that victims need access to firearms for protection because on the surface it sounds sensible, but the data shows that firearm access is actually making abuse situations worse for the victims.

None of that has to do with me wanting a gun because an ex is crazy. Your privilege is real.

You sitting here mouthing off stats as if there isn't still an individual looking for protection. ONLy 5% live apart but fuck them and let's ignore the fact that many successfully defend themselves. Fuck those bitches.

Lol @ trying to invoke privilege when most people killed by DV are shot. Having access to guns doesn't save anyone. Fuck you for trying to manipulate people this way.

Again you are turning individuals into stats. A gun very much can and does save individuals.

Illegal Chinese fentanyl occasionally is used by people who are in pain, therefore it should be legally available without restrictions. That's your argument?

Do the stats not matter? We shouldn't legislate based on anecdotes

I am more offended by them saying you have to be 21 years old. If you are old enough to be drafted for the military then you should be old enough to have a firearm. Same with the right to vote.

You should have to be older to be drafted (or get rid of the draft entirely, which is my opinion).

Having the right to vote I don't think should confer you automatic rights to own a firearm. Voting is a much more powerful right in the first place.

Now, if you pay taxes on wages at all, you should be given the right to vote, such as working 16 year olds.

This is basically how gun laws have worked in Canada for ages. Treating access to guns the same way you do cars just makes sense. Of course the ease of being able to smuggle weapons bought from the unregulated US sources has meant that gun crime here is still a major problem compared to countries who share borders with others with similar gun control laws. The majority of gun crime in Canada happens with illegally sourced weapons 85% of which has been sourced to guns purchased in the US. Mexico experiences a similar issue.

Gun pollution spreads over our borders and the US is simply big enough and self obsessed enough to not care. Every democratic nation has it's own version of the US Constitution and unlike when the US Constitution was written, democracies now make up the majority of government systems on the world stage. There are now a lot of democratic societies who have been stable and just fine without massive amounts of citizen gun ownership. In a very real way American gun law structured as it is interferes with our country's ability to address guns on our own democratic and constitutional grounds.

Democracy and freedoms of the kind the US bills itself on is now considered pretty basic worldwide. Anyone operating on an originalist veiw really needs to unbury their head from the sand and realize how much the world has changed since it was written.

21 to buy a handgun. Rifles you only have to be 18. Quite a few states are like that.

"Sorry bro, you're going to have to wait for the first amendment to kick in."

"Yeah, we're gonna have to quarter soldiers here. Sorry, you don't get 3rd amendment protections for another month."

“Sorry bro, you’re going to have to wait for the first amendment to kick in.”

Go protest without waiting for a permit in any sufficiently busy city.

Lol for real.. These people downvoting you are fucking morons, as usual.

Depleted Uranium ammo was not a thing until the 40's. Not long enough to have a historical basis for banning civilians from owning them.

Me too. They just gloss over three fourths of the amendment.

Well regulated.

Milita.

To protect the security of the state.

These words mean nothing to conservatives, they read them right out of the Constitution and then claim they are adhering to strictly to the text.

Why do you think law abiding citizens should be subjected to waiting periods to exercise their constitutional rights?

The constitutional right to acquire arms immediately and without precondition, I see. Just like the constitutional right to say anything, at any time, without any consequences.

This doesn't remove all background checks, so "immediately and without precondition" is facetious.

I agree with not selling weapons to known maniacs, but I also believe that if the govt knows someone's dangerous enough that they shouldn't own a gun for self defense, they already should have been removed from the general population and arrested/imprisoned etc, as they are still very dangerous to the general population without said firearm.

1 more...

Why do you think law abiding citizens should be gassed, arrested and shot at for exercising their constitutional right to petition the government against grievances? Because Trump sure enjoyed doing those things and he says he's going to do it even more if he gets re-elected. And then there's the Republican love of cruel and unusual punishments. And, of course, there's Mike Johnson and other Republicans denying that there is or should be a separation between church and state.

Seems like maybe the people who are supposed to protect your constitutional right to own a gun don't really care about other constitutional rights.

Point out the part of my comment where I said that

Are you going to be voting for the people who claim to be preserving gun rights or are you going to vote for the people who want sensible gun regulations?

Define "sensible"

No, I'm not playing that game because it has nothing to do with my point.

Dang I didn't expect to see you avoiding the point, refusing to answer basic questions, and shitting on people for not voting blue no matter who on two separate posts today xD I hope being an ignorant liberal is very fun, and that you learn some time soon that "if you're not with us you're with the terrorists" isn't how the world works

Is it true or is it not true that if you don't vote for either Biden or Trump, you are not going to be voting for someone who has any chance of winning?

Because so far, the only answer I've gotten is 'Republicans deserve to win to teach Democrats a lesson.'

If you agree with that too, why not just vote for Trump?

2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...

What a lot of whataboutism. I'm against all of that, too, but I can also be against limits on my rights of self defense.

So do you vote for the people who promise to protect your gun rights at all cost or do you vote for the people who feel there needs to be sensible gun regulations?

I don't vote for the people you're talking about

What is the point of voting for anyone else? What do you achieve?

What's the point of voting for the two choices you hate when there are other choices?

Because those are the only two choices that have a chance of winning. Now please answer my question. What are you achieving?

Now you see the crux of the issue it seems, on either side someone is attacking the right to something, there is no champion of all rights, everyone wants to control their neighbor.

Seems to me like one is championing ending all of those rights and the other isn't.

Well you'd be wrong, sorry dude.

Yes. Both clearly seek to limit different civil liberties, and supporters of each fight about why what they want to limit isn't actually a civil liberty.

Please show me the Democratic Party's equivalent to Project 2025.

Or did you not even read it?

Are you denying that the democrat party seeks to limit the right to bear arms? Because by being purposefully obtuse and attempting to deflect (which appears to be your typical MO), you seem to be saying that.

Yes, I know, one side seeks to regulate firearms like they were regulated for pretty much all of the 19th century and the other seeks to violate the Constitution in every way possible. No different.

5 more...
5 more...
5 more...
5 more...
5 more...
5 more...
5 more...
5 more...
7 more...

Because it makes the world safer. Same reason you need a fence around a pool, even though the pursuit of happiness is protected by the constitution (for me, happiness is unbridled access to a pool).

That's the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.

Oh so you have no idea what you're talking about and have no business publically sharing opinions on this, or really any aspect of the Constitution. You simply don't have the requisite knowledge to be credible.

1 more...

Same way as law abiding citizens need to wait 21 years, goes through firearm training, and gone through background check to exercise their constitutional rights. If 30 days is such a long time to wait and considered unconstitutional, why not lower the age requirement to 12 years old? Why need firearm training? Why need background check?

That's what Republicans want. No gun control regulations at all. Anyone, according to them, should be able to buy a gun at any age at any time anywhere.

1 more...

You can wait, bud. In OR it's already a ~2 week wait to pick one up from an FFL, it didn't affect me in the slightest. It's clear we need more in-depth preprocessing before granting weapon ownership. It's a deadly item, just like a car is. You gotta register and have a license and all this shit before you can hit the road. Whats the diff?

Also, you actually have to wait to exercise lots of constitutional rights. What you gonna advocate for voting whenever the fuck you want? It's our constitutional right after all!

The issue you should have with any of this is with licensing it likely puts a financial barrier to that same constitutional right.

The car argument is not good. Anyone can buy and operate a car immediately on private property without any interference from government in the US.

Wrong.

Commerce clause.

The car has already been subjected to tens of thousands of pages of regulation before anyone drives it off the lot.

This a stupid argument. The right isn't to just have guns.

It's to have guns whilst being a member of a militia that trains regularly and only for the purpose of protecting state security.

That's literally what the text says.

All that extra shit you are adding to the right is stuff made up by charlatans. And I guess it worked, because they sure fooled you.

Have you read the constitution? It literally does not say it's only for the purpose of protecting the state

The problem with the world today is that we have illiterates like you voting.

I'm an attorney so I think you're basically illiterate in comparison. Why don't you go read it again, you absolute donkey. Tell us all why a militia is even necessary in the eyes of the framers. The text on this could not be more clear.

::: spoiler Second Amendment True Purpose Revealed: True Secret the Framers Don't Want You to Know "the security of a free state" :::

10 more...

I think SCOTUS might reverse that. I don't think there was any recent case concerning waiting periods.

It's not the waiting period that's the problem, it's the permit to attempt to buy.

There's already a background check when you buy, these states were requiring a second background check before you buy. Pointless paperwork.

SCOTUS has held that permitting is fine with Bruen, though, as long as it doesn't involve subjective "suitability" criteria, which is my point.

Maryland also required fingerprints, which is a huge hassle and will likely cause the law to stay invalidated. It costs money, and requires you to go to a jail or sheriffs office, which is only open from 9-4 with lunch blocked from 11:30-1:30.

and “the law’s waiting period could well be the critical time in which the applicant expects to face danger.”

Sometimes that danger is them getting caught by police before they're able to execute.

10 more...