In a major victory for gun rights advocates, a federal appeals court on Thursday sided with a broad coalition of gun owners, businesses and organizations that challenged the constitutionality of a Maryland ban on assault weapons and other laws aimed at curbing gun violence.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said the state's prohibition on what the court called "the vast majority of semi-automatic rifles commonly kept by several million American citizens" amounted to a violation of their rights under the Constitution.
"In our view, Maryland law implicates the core protection of the Second Amendment -- the right of law-abiding responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home," Chief Judge William Traxler wrote in the divided ruling.
Provisions that outlaw these firearms, Traxler wrote, "substantially burden this fundamental right."
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who recently suspended his Democratic presidential campaign, signed Maryland's Firearm Safety Act of 2013 in the wake of the school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, which spurred similar initiatives in other Democratic-leaning states.
The legislation mostly targets specific kinds of semi-automatic firearms -- such as AR-15s and AK-47s -- and large-capacity magazines, and adds certain registration and licensing requirements.
But gun rights advocates, including the National Rifle Association, quickly moved to challenge these laws in the courts, claiming that the restrictions they imposed on lawful gun ownership were overly broad and weren't proven to save lives.
The legal attacks have largely failed. Last October, a federal appeals court in Manhattan upheld the most iconic of these laws -- those passed in New York and Connecticut in direct response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. And in December, the Supreme Court declined to review a ruling out of Illinois that upheld a similar ban on assault weapons.
The high court's reluctance to intervene in these disputes has left the Second Amendment in a bit of a state of flux. Since the Supreme Court established in 2008 and 2010 that the amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear arms for self-defense within the home, judges have struggled to apply those decisions to the newer spate of gun legislation. And inconsistent rulings and standards across the country have left the scope of the law unclear.
When the Supreme Court refused to take up the Illinois case, Justice Clarence Thomas complained that the Second Amendment was being relegated to "a second-class right."
"If a broad ban on firearms can be upheld based on conjecture that the public might feel safer (while being no safer at all), then the Second Amendment guarantees nothing," he wrote, and added that those earlier decisions enshrining the right to gun ownership shouldn't be expected to "clarify the entire field."
The lack of clarity since then underscores why Thursday's decision may be a boon to those who want to see a broader interpretation of the Second Amendment, setting the stage for the next Supreme Court confrontation.
"This case was a major victory for the NRA and gun rights advocates," said Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA who specializes in Second Amendment law. "This opinion is an important one because it subjects important gun control laws to the most strict form of judicial scrutiny."
Indeed, the biggest surprise in Chief Judge Traxler's 66-page opinion is the words "strict scrutiny," a stringent constitutional test that most government laws and regulations fail. Other courts have applied more forgiving standards to similar gun legislation and upheld it.
The 4th Circuit's decision didn't outright strike down the Maryland legislation. Instead, it instructed a lower court to subject the provision to the higher legal standard, meaning more litigation and the possibility of a future showdown at the Supreme Court -- though maybe not yet, according to Winkler.
As if to illustrate the volatile politics and legalities of gun control, dissenting Circuit Judge Robert King all but declared that the court's ruling would lead to the next mass shooting.
"Let's be real," King wrote. "The assault weapons banned by Maryland's [law] are exceptionally lethal weapons of war."
I wonder if Chris Van Hollen will still be bragging about violating the Constitution and the rights of Maryland's citizens in future campaign ads...
The Iowa caucuses are over, and the jumbo campaign apparatus that has been camped there for nearly a year quickly packed up and moved to join the political circus that has been similarly entertaining New Hampshire, which holds its primary Tuesday.
Meanwhile in Michigan, just over a month away from its own presidential nominating votes, the airwaves remain still. Candidates fly over the state on their way from Iowa to New Hampshire and back, stopping only occasionally to give a brief speech or pick up a check before rushing back to the two early voting states. It doesn’t make sense.
Iowa offers Democrats 44 delegates, and Republicans 30. New Hampshire has 23 GOP delegates to divvy up, and 32 Democratic delegates.
And Michigan? It has 152 Democratic delegates up for grabs, and 50 Republican.
Yet because Iowa and New Hampshire have the first-to-vote franchise, they have an inordinate influence in selecting the presidential nominees, and in shaping the messages of the campaigns. The also get a ridiculous amount of money showered on them.
The campaigns spent $40 million to sway Iowa caucusers; at the end, the spending hit a $6 million-a-week pace. Over the the past year, Iowa and New Hampshire residents had to be in hiding to avoid bumping into a candidate.
It would be one thing if these two states were microcosms of the nation. But neither represents the industrial or demographic diversity of America.
Fewer people live in Iowa than in Metro Detroit. Ninety-two percent of the population is white; fewer than 1 percent of businesses are owned by African-Americans. New Hampshire is even smaller and, at 94 percent, whiter.
Appealing to Iowa and New Hampshire voters requires different messages than would resonate nationwide. But if candidates fail to move the homogenous voters of these states, they’re at risk of seeing their funding dry up and their ambitions busted.
Presidential hopefuls should have to prove their appeal to a broader audience early on. The primary season should be revamped to force them to spend those early months demonstrating the resources to mount a national campaign.
The parties should replace Iowa and New Hampshire with a multi-state primary, combining states from various regions of the country. Iowa and New Hampshire could be part of that grouping, but they shouldn’t hold exclusive rights.
Limiting the primaries to eight or 10 dates running from early February to late May, and putting four to six states together each time, would more closely mimic what will be required of the eventual nominee in a general election campaign.
They couldn’t get by simply exciting a narrow constituency. You would be less likely to see candidates scurrying from corn field to corn field with a Bible and an “I Heart Ethanol” cap trying to woo evangelical farmers.
Under the current system, we spend a year taking the temperature of voters in two states that won’t matter in November. We might get stronger candidates if we paid more attention to representative states like Michigan.
Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor who had always acknowledged his campaign for president would be a long shot, ended the effort late Monday night after a disappointing finish in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses.
Eight months after he stood in Federal Hill Park to launch a campaign he said would deliver a message of “new leadership” in the race for the Democratic nomination, O’Malley told supporters in Iowa that he had “fought very hard ... to give people a choice” but that the time had come to suspend that effort.
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“This cause continues, this fight continues,” said O’Malley, joined on stage by his family. “I am suspending this presidential bid, but I am not ending this fight.”
The announcement came after O’Malley barely registered in Iowa against his better-known rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, failing to meet already low expectations set by polling in the weeks before the caucuses. O’Malley did not receive the 15 percent threshold of caucus goers needed to be considered viable in most of the state’s precincts.
Clinton wished O'Malley well in an address late Monday, calling him "a great public servant who has served Maryland and our country."
The former Baltimore mayor, who had been rumored to be considering a presidential run for years, oversaw an issues-based campaign that was heavy on retail politics in Iowa and New Hampshire; he spent more time in Iowa last year than either Clinton or Sanders. Even his some of his critics have given him credit for the disciplined campaign.
But political analysts say O’Malley’s effort was severely hampered by timing, including the decision by Sanders to enter the race early. The Vermont senator managed to coalesce the same anti-Clinton voters that O’Malley had hoped to court. The governor also struggled to capture attention in a media landscape dominated by Republican Donald Trump.
“From the moment Governor O’Malley entered this race, he campaigned with heart and with a singular focus on building a better future for American families,” Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. “Gov. O’Malley knows that progress is not inevitable — progress is a choice, and he has the record to show it.”
O’Malley and Wasserman Schultz had exchanged terse words throughout much of the campaign after O’Malley repeatedly harped on party leaders for sanctioning only six debates before Iowa and New Hampshire. The Democratic candidates — now, minus O’Malley — will hold a seventh debate on Thursday.
The former Maryland governor influenced the race in other ways, as well. He was the first candidate to call on the U.S. to accept more refugees from Syria, for instance — an idea that was later adopted by Clinton. And his campaign released detailed policy memos on immigration, Wall Street reform and gun control before any of the other candidates.
O’Malley always knew he would be in for a serious challenge running against Clinton, a onetime ally with strong support in the party. The governor tried to sell voters on a more liberal approach, one based on his final years in Annapolis and accomplishments that included a same-sex marriage law and a higher minimum wage.
But while O’Malley’s campaign was technically smooth, outside forces repeatedly delivered setbacks. The rioting that took place in Baltimore in April came at a time when O’Malley was trying to pitch himself as a technocrat who had turned the city around. Earlier, his lieutenant governor, Anthony Brown, lost to Republican Larry Hogan in last year’s gubernatorial election.
By last fall O’Malley was struggling to change the narrative that the contest for the Democratic nomination increasingly appeared to be a two-person race. And by early December, in an indication of his inability to capture support, O’Malley was forced to take out a $500,000 loan just to keep his campaign afloat.
On Monday night, sounding a recently developed campaign theme, O’Malley urged his supporters to “hold strong” to the issues they had been pushing for months.
“In conclusion, there is no conclusion,” O’Malley said. “Thank you for allowing me to make this offering out of love.”
