2A Groups Ask SCOTUS to Strike Down Maryland’s ‘Gun-Free Zones’

The Supreme Court will address one way anti-gun Democrats have tried to limit the right to carry when it issues its decision in Wolford v. Lopez at some point in the next few weeks, but Second Amendment advocates are asking the justices to look beyond the “vampire rule” issue in that case and take on some of the other “sensitive places” that gun-controlled states have put in place over the past few years. 

Novotny v. Moore was filed by Maryland Shall Issue, Maryland Rifle & Pistol Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, and several individual plaintiffs not long after the state adopted its Bruen response bill that banned lawful carry almost everywhere in the state, including on all private property by default. 

While the Fourth Circuit found Maryland’s “vampire rule” unconstitutional, it upheld the vast majority of the state’s supposedly “sensitive places,” and in their cert petition to SCOTUS the plaintiffs argue the stakes in the are existentially important. 

Indeed, the Court’s answer to this question will determine whether Bruen establishes a meaningful right to public carry at all. If, as Maryland maintains and the Fourth Circuit below held, the right to carry a firearm “in public” does not include public locations that are owned by the government, or where First Amendment protected activity is being carried out, or where people go to eat and to drink or gather for amusement and recreation, then it is hard to know what the right to carry a firearm “in public” actually protects.

Oh, maybe a few city streets and sidewalks here and there, but that’s about it. 

While the Supreme Court said in Bruen that a “narrow exception to allow governments to restrict individuals’ Second Amendment rights in ‘sensitive places’ exists, the default is that lawful carry is allowed almost everywhere. Again, the key word there is “narrow.” 

The Fourth Circuit has essentially turned that proposition on its head, assuming there is a narrow right to carry in places that aren’t “crowded” or contain “vulnerable” populations. Even then, though, the appellate court found a way to uphold carry restrictions in locations that aren’t crowded at all, like state forests. According to the Fourth Circuit, those largely empty wild spaces are akin to urban parks, and therefore guns can be banned there as well. 

The Fourth Circuit contorted the Supreme Court’s “text, history, and tradition” test beyond recognition in order to uphold some of Maryland’s prohibited places. To justify the state’s ban on lawful carry in places where alcohol is served for on-site consumption, for example, the court pointed to colonial-era laws that forbade militia members from drinking while on duty; a colonial Virginia statute prohibiting the discharge of a weapon while intoxicated; mid-19th century restrictions on alcohol sellers that prohibited them from storing gunpowder; and three states that adopted laws in the mid-to-late 1800s that prohibited intoxicated persons from carrying firearms. 

None of those laws actually banned the lawful carrying of firearms in all places where alcohol is sold, so the Fourth Circuit made a secondary argument to buttress their bogus contention: there is a “well-established tradition of prohibiting firearms at crowded places.” 

That “well-established” position simply doesn’t exist. Going back to 1791, the places where guns were banned were few and far between. The efforts to impose restrictions on the right to carry didn’t really gain ground until after the Civil War, but even if we assume that restrictions adopted around the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified have any significant bearing, the handful of laws that the Fourth Circuit cites are not representative of a national tradition, or a long-lasting one. 

Since Bruen was handed down in 2022, the Supreme Court has largely let the lower courts run roughshod over the right to carry. Le’ts hope that comes to an end in Wolford, and that the case dealing with Hawaii’s “vampire rule” is just the first of several decisions that will restore the right to carry in states where it’s been gutted, like Maryland. 

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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