MD Bump Stocks Ban Upheld by Federal Appeals Court

7/6/2020
 

Maryland banned private ownership of bump stocks in October 2018. The ban was enacted in response to the deadliest mass shooting in US history, the concert shooting in Las Vegas where the gunman used bump stocks to kill 58 people. In Maryland, the possession of a bump stock is a misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a $5,000 fine. A nationwide ban on bump stocks took effect in 2019, but the Maryland ban is broader than the national one.

On June 29, a divided federal appeals court upheld Maryland's ban, rejecting a challenge by gun owners' rights advocates alleging that the ban violates the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment. In the majority opinion, Judge Stephanie Thacker wrote that the ban does not require owners of bump stocks to turn them over to the government and that property owners are aware that, where the government has a "traditionally high degree of control," laws can make their property worthless.