Latest filing on HQL suit

The Fourth Circuit’s decision in Kolbe confirms that Plaintiffs’ challenge must be analyzed under strict scrutiny. The court noted that “[n]othing in our decisions today affects or calls into question the Second Amendment protection of . . . Heller’s handguns,” Kolbe, Slip op. at 68. The court called a handgun “‘the quintessential self-defense weapon,’” id. at 52 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 629), and stressed “the relevance of the handgun’s status as ‘the quintessential self-defense weapon’ — a status that was obviously and unquestionably important to the Heller Court.” Id. at 70 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 628-29). The Fourth Circuit held that the restrictions on the long guns at issue in that case, if protected by the Second Amendment, would warrant only intermediate scrutiny, “in part because the [challenged law] leaves citizens free to protect themselves with handguns . . . .” Id. at 69. In this case, however, Plaintiffs challenge a complete restriction on their ability to acquire and possess the “quintessential self-defense weapon,” and only strict scrutiny can apply under Fourth Circuit precedent. See Hosford, 843 F.3d at 168 (stating that intermediate scrutiny applies to laws that regulate rather than restrict).

As alleged in the Complaint, the HQL Statute restricts rather than regulates the “central self-defense concern of the Second Amendment,” self-defense in the home. Complaint ¶¶ 54-57. Plaintiffs, and all Maryland citizens, are prohibited from acquiring what Heller and Kolbe recognized to be the “quintessential self-defense weapon” for self-defense in the home unless they undertake the onerous and redundant HQL application process. The HQL requirement reaches into the homes of law-abiding, responsible citizens to prevent them from arming themselves with these protected firearms. Under the two-part test adopted by the Fourth Circuit, as reaffirmed in Kolbe, the State’s restrictive HQL scheme must be tested under the strict scrutiny standard of review. Woollard, 712 F.3d at 878.

Click to expand...