US Appeals Court Upholds Maryland’s Ban On 45 Kinds Of Semi-Automatic Firearms And 10 Round Magazine Limits

ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND — The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., issued a 10-4 decision on upholding Maryland’s continued ban on 45 different types of semi-automatic firearms and 10-round magazine capacity limits.

via FOX News

“Put simply, we have no power to extend Second Amendment protections to weapons of war,” Judge Robert King wrote for the court, adding that the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller explicitly excluded such coverage.

Judge William Traxler issued a dissenting opinion. Traxler wrote that the majority “has gone to greater lengths than any other court to eviscerate the constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms.”

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals joins an increasing number of Federal Court rulings that place gun owners and concealed carriers under additional scrutiny.

In the last two years, federal courts have ruled that:

• Marijuana users are not entitled to their Second Amendment rights
• Concealed carry isn’t constitutionally guaranteed
• Florida doctors are allowed to ask patients about their guns

This recent addition to the ongoing procession of restrictive efforts means that states are now justified in limiting the sale and possession of magazines and firearms that are so called ‘weapons of war’.

“For a law-abiding citizen who, for whatever reason, chooses to protect his home with a semi-automatic rifle instead of a semi-automatic handgun, Maryland’s law clearly imposes a significant burden on the exercise of the right to arm oneself at home, and it should at least be subject to strict scrutiny review before it is allowed to stand,” Traxler wrote.

But Elizabeth Banach, executive director of Marylanders to Prevent Gun Violence, said the decision is “overwhelming proof that reasonable measures to prevent gun violence are constitutional.”

“Maryland’s law needs to become a national model of evidence-based policies that will reduce gun violence,” Banach wrote in a statement.

Banach must be citing the violent crime statistics for Baltimore.

Baltimore has a Crime Index of 2, meaning it’s estimated to be safer than 2% of other cities in the United States. A person is eleven times more likely to be murdered in Baltimore than he is, on average, anywhere else in the United States.

Gun control is not working in Maryland. And if the Federal courts want to create the justification to push Maryland-style gun control measures onto the rest of the country, they’re in the business of victimizing citizens, not stopping criminals.

This is yet another activist judicial panel seeking to usurp the very fabric of the country’s founding principles in favor of nanny-state gun reforms that make millions of people vulnerable to violent criminals. Their decision is blindly parroted by a string of non-profit organizations that only seek to make this type of legislation uniform across the country.

In lieu of control of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, the gun-control lobby seeks to peddle its influence in its last bastion of hope: the carefully cultivated and controlled hands of federal judges.

Unfortunately, for Maryland residents, it means you will continue to be told what guns you can purchase and how many rounds that gun can carry.