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Of all the many restrictions placed on constitutionally protected Second Amendment rights, one of the most senseless and ineffectual is the long-standing prohibition on the purchase of handguns by out-of-state residents. You can travel outside your state of residence and buy a long gun – a shotgun or even one of the dreaded AR-15s, or any other semi-automatic rifle - but you can’t purchase a handgun unless the licensed dealer you buy it from is willing to ship that weapon to a licensed firearms dealer in your home state.
It’s a rule that makes no sense on any level, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 18 ruled it unconstitutional.
As the Fifth Circuit opinion noted, the right to keep and bear arms necessitates the right to obtain those arms in the first place. Thus, a federal law that prevents someone from purchasing a firearm – assuming the person doesn’t fall into any of the categories of restricted persons – is on its face an infringement of Second Amendment rights.
Inconsistent with the Second Amendment
A district court dismissed a challenge to the ban on direct interstate handgun purchases, but the Fifth Circuit ruling overturning the lower court’s decision was loud and clear: “The Ban sullies the plain text of the Second Amendment and is inconsistent with the nation’s tradition of firearms regulation.”
Though the current Trump administration is perhaps the least hostile to Second Amendment rights of any other administration in living memory, the legal battles continue. And, of late, organizations fighting to protect the right of the people to keep and bear arms have notched some significant victories. This latest Fifth Circuit ruling is a big one – though the Department of Justice may yet appeal.
The problem for anyone – including Justice Department lawyers – who is hoping to defend the ban on interstate handgun purchases is that they cannot point to any historical examples of such a prohibition that align with the public safety argument. Similar restrictions were not imposed for public safety reasons, but under extraordinary circumstances, such as war.
Testing the Department of Justice
According to a report from Bearing Arms, the Justice Department produced multiple examples of past firearms restrictions to support their defense, but none of them matched the Supreme Court’s established standard of “why.” In other words, the cited historical restrictions were wartime measures, rather than efforts to supposedly enhance public safety.
So, essentially, as the Fifth Circuit panel of judges recognized, an undue burden is placed upon any American who travels outside their home state and then wishes to purchase a handgun. They must find a dealer who is willing to ship the weapon to a licensed dealer in the buyer’s home state. Almost certainly, the buyer will pay a premium for that, even assuming the gun store in question is okay with it. There are no credible studies or statistical analyses that show the ban on interstate firearms purchases enhances public safety. After all, the anti-gun lobby is forever insisting that AR-15s are the problem. Yet, semi-automatic rifles are not subject to the same interstate purchase bans as handguns.
Thus, the entire public safety argument collapses.
If the DOJ appeals the Fifth Circuit decision, then maybe it is not the supporter of Second Amendment rights it has claimed to be under the second Trump administration. If it does not challenge, then this is another significant victory in the apparently never-ending fight to exercise a right protected – with no exceptions or caveats – by the Constitution of the United States.
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