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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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?
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.
They had gun control in the "Wild West." Many towns didn't allow guns within the borders. But even that era that Republicans love so much had too much regulation for them.
Oregon's law was terrible and needed to be overturned ASAP. It basically gave sherriffs, the most ulta-conservative people in the state, the power to decide who did and didn't get guns. The conspiracy minded part of me thinks measure 114 was put on the ballot to set gun control efforts back by 6 to 8 years, and it succeeded.
"May issue, determined by police" will only ever prevent minorities from owning guns. Uncle Jim, that shares conspiracies on Facebook and beats his wife, will never be blocked by a sheriff.
As a gun owner myself, I support the licensing, the high capacity mags ban won't do a damn thing though. If you've ever seen a 10rd 556 mag it's small as hell and you can stuff lots in pockets and such. It won't stop a damn thing, especially with coward cops who just listen to the action and do nothing.
if that's what it takes then fine but why can't we come up with shit that actually makes sense instead of these 'whatever we can get' stuff. I realize republican trash makes that nigh impossible though. Fucking dumb as hell
Because other developed countries are just that... developed...they have safety nets, and single payer healthcare...and don't lock up millions of people...they also don't have and have never had 500+ million firearms in civilian hands.
I also support licensing as a gun owner, but banning anything isn't going to do a damn thing. There's so much pointless semantics in these gun control proposals.