Fourth Circuit Rules Ban on “Assault Weapons” is Constitutional

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that laws banning firearms such as AR-15 are constitutional in a case challenging “Maryland’s Firearms Safety Act of 2013.”

“The elected representatives of the people of Maryland enacted the Firearms Safety Act of 2013 in the wake of mass shootings across the country and a plague of gun violence in the state, the opinion reads. “This case is about whether the Act’s general prohibition on the sale and possession of certain military-style ‘assault weapons,’ including the AR-15, the AK-47, and the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle, is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.”

The Fourth Circuit decided the Bianchi v. Brown (formerly Bianchi v. Frosh) case funded by the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) after the Supreme Court remanded the case back down, demanding the Court use the standards outlined in Bruen to rule on the constitutionality of the law. The Court appears to have not changed its opinions in light of Bruen and decided to keep the same approach.

The Court relied heavily on the Kolbe v. Hogan decision that challenged the Maryland law in 2017. That case relied heavily on interest balancing, which is disallowed by Bruen. Although SCOTUS rejected the approach used to find for the state in Kolbe, the Court ignored the SCOTUS’s demands.

The Court states that “assault weapons” fall outside Second Amendment protections because “they are military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense.” The Fourth Circuit claims that guns such as the AR-15 are “excessively dangerous” and are incompatible with a “lawful and safe society.”

“For these reasons, 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,” the Court said. “In so holding, we offer no view on how a state should regulate firearms. Nor do we do anything to impose Maryland’s regulations upon other states. We do hold, however, that Maryland was well within its constitutional prerogative to legislate as it did. We therefore reject the challenges of appellants and affirm the judgment of the district court.”

To many, the argument sounds like interest balancing. Interest balancing or intermediate scrutiny weighs the wants of the state against the rights of the people. Before Bruen, states could use this legal technique to ban certain firearms, but SCOTUS rejected the two-step test and ruled that the Courts could only rely on the text, tradition, and history of the Second Amendment when ruling if a law is constitutional. The Fourth claimed that it did reconsider the case using the Bruen standard.

The Fourth Circuit said that SCOTUS allows for weapons “not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes” to be banned. According to the Court, “assault weapons” are not typically used for self-defense and, therefore, can be prohibited. We have seen multiple activist judges try to shoehorn in “for self-defense” after “in common use,” and that is precisely what the Fourth Circuit attempted to do in this case.

“Second Amendment, with its ‘central component’ of ‘individual self-defense,’ is not concerned with ensuring citizens have access to military-grade or gangster-style weapons,” the order reads. “In short, then, while the Second Amendment jealously safeguards the right to possess weapons that are most appropriate and typically used for self-defense, it emphatically does not stretch to encompass excessively dangerous weapons ill-suited and disproportionate to such a purpose.”

The Court highlighted the misuse of the AR-15 by criminals in its decision. There are over 25 million AR-15s in circulation in the United States. There has never been a year where there were over 1000 deaths caused by long guns of any type, including hunting rifles and shotguns. The chances of being shot by any kind of long gun are roughly the same as being struck by lightning.

This case is unusual because, initially, the case was supposed to be a panel decision. Two of the three judges ruled for the plaintiffs in the case, but Obama appointee Judge Stephanie Thacker held her descent until a left-leaning panel could make another panel decision on the Maryland “assault weapons” ban. After that, the Fourth Circuit moved the case to an en banc status without the original decision ever being released. This move will most likely be highlighted in any petition to the Supreme Court.

Although the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Maryland law, FPC has vowed to return the case to the Supreme Court.

About John Crump

John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. Mr. Crump has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.