Appeals Court Strikes Down Ban On Interstate Handgun Sales

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a ban on interstate handgun sales violated the Second Amendment.

The prohibition was put in place in the 1968 Gun Control Act, which passed in the aftermath of the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Sr. A majority of a three-judge panel consisting of United States Circuit Judges Jerry E. Smith, Catharina Haynes and Kurt D. Engelhardt from the United State Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that the provisions barring direct sales of handguns violated the Second Amendment in the ruling.

“The Ban sullies the plain text of the Second Amendment and is inconsistent with the nation’s tradition of firearms regulation, dating back to the founding era, under that Amendment,” Smith, a Reagan appointee, wrote for himself and Englehardt, a George W. Bush appointee. Haynes, another George W. Bush appointee, dissented from the ruling.

“I respect the majority opinion, but I respectfully dissent,” Haynes wrote. “I agree with the district court’s decision that the several provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 922 discussed in this case are not unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. That is all that is in play in this case, thus, I would affirm.”

Pro-Second Amendment groups have obtained a number of legal victories in courts since May 31. In June, the Supreme Court ruled in Wolford v. Lopez that Hawaii’s law requiring private property owners who wished to allow concealed carry on the premises to clearly post signs that carrying guns was allowed was unconstitutional. The justices also ruled in Hemani v. United States that a regular marijuana user could not be prosecuted under 18 USC 922(g)(3), in a 9-0 decision released in June and authored by Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit struck down New Jersey’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” in a July 17 decision, expanding a lower-court’s ruling that only applied to AR-15-style rifles to include many modern semiautomatic rifles and also declaring standard capacity magazines as protected under the Second Amendment.

Chief United States District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas, a George W. Bush appointee, issued an August ruling in favor of Defense Distributed, accepting arguments that the “frame or receiver rule” enacted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) was unconstitutional on both Fifth Amendment and Second Amendment grounds.

Also in August, a federal judge found that registration and administrative requirements for suppressors, short-barreled rifles and other items whose tax was reduced to $0.00 were unconstitutional. United States District Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas, a Trump appointee, granted a motion for summary judgement from attorneys representing the Silencer Shop Foundation on Aug. 5, with the Justice Department having not filed an appeal of the decision as of Monday.