GUNS/LEGAL/SUPREME COURT: “The Supreme Court on Monday [11-27-17] turned down two appeals seeking to expand access to firearms, leaving in place a Maryland law banning semiautomatic rifles and a Florida restriction on carrying guns openly.
Gun dealers and firearms enthusiasts had challenged a Maryland law enacted following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn. They argued that the state’s ban on rifles and shotguns it classified as assault weapons, along with high-capacity magazines, violated a Second Amendment right to individual gun ownership.
A federal district court in Baltimore upheld the Firearm Safety Act in 2014, but a three-judge panel of the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Va., told the district judge last year to reconsider the issue under legal standards likely to invalidate at least portions of the law.
That decision didn’t last long, however, as all 14 judges on the Fourth Circuit reheard the case and rejected the Second Amendment claims in a 10-to-4 vote. That ruling followed those of four other federal appeals courts that have upheld restrictions on assault weapons despite a 2008 Supreme Court precedent, District of Columbia v. Heller, which found the Second Amendment provides individuals the right to keep handguns at home for self-defense.”
-Jess Bravin, “Supreme Court Lets Stand Maryland Assault-Weapons Ban,” The Wall Street Journal online, Nov. 27, 2017 03:34pm