Case Summary
Playing on popular misconceptions and fears, the State of Maryland bans what it deems “assault weapons”—a non-technical public relations term, used to demonize commonly owned and constitutionally protected firearms. A group of plaintiffs have sued Maryland’s attorney general, challenging this unconstitutional ban and seeking a full restoration of their natural right to self-defense—now they’re asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case.
Mountain States Legal Foundation’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms joined with a group of Second Amendment professors, the Cato Institute, the John Locke Foundation, and the Independence Institute to file a brief before the Supreme Court urging them to take this case and vindicate Marylanders’—and all Americans’—right to own some of the most popular self-defense tools on the market.
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Case History
Maryland outlaws many common semiautomatic rifles, on the premise that these are “assault weapons” ordinary citizens should not own. Many of the features banned by Maryland increase the rifles’ usefulness and safety in emergency situations. These arms are legal in 44 states, where they are among the nation’s most popular models.
“Assault weapon” is a politicized catchphrase with no fixed meaning, invoked by politicians and anti-gun activists to frighten the public and criminalize constitutionally protected arms. Even courts have bought into this fiction—falsely claiming that the arms in question are essentially military weapons, and can be banned for ordinary citizens based on a gross misreading of Supreme Court precedent.
Dominic Bianchi, David Snope, and Micah Schaefer are Maryland residents who wish to exercise their Second Amendment protected right to acquire and possess these weapons. In December 2020 they sued Maryland’s attorney general in the District of Maryland, in a lawsuit joined by several gun rights organizations.
The group’s lawsuit directly challenged the Fourth Circuit’s 2017 Kolbe v. Hogan decision. In Kolbe, the Circuit sidestepped the clear meaning of the Supreme Court’s D.C. v. Heller ruling—upholding the constitutional protection of arms in common use for lawful purposes—in favor of its own preferred test, with grave implications.
According to the Kolbe court—twisting the meaning of a decontextualized phrase from Heller—weapons that legislators and courts deem “most useful in military service,” rather than civilian life, are simply not protected by the Second Amendment at all. This Circuit precedent is especially alarming given the number of officials who see no place for any firearms in everyday civilian life.
In their 2020 complaint, Bianchi and the other Petitioners acknowledged that their Second Amendment claim against Maryland conflicted with the Kolbe ruling, which they sought to overturn. The district court dismissed their complaint on this basis in March 2021.
In April 2021, the Petitioners appealed to the Fourth Circuit, again acknowledging their case’s conflict with Kolbe and their desire to see it overruled. The Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal in September 2021.
An appeal to the Supreme Court followed, with a petition for certiorari filed in December 2021.
The Supreme Court granted the writ of certiorari and then vacated the judgment. It remanded the case to the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for further consideration in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen.
