On Monday, January 13, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals AGAIN struck down Pennsylvania’s ban on young adults carrying firearms during a state of emergency. The tricky case, brought by the Second Amendment Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, and three private citizens, took a torturous path to the Supreme Court. SCOTUS directed the Third Circuit to look at it again in light of recent precedent in Rahimi.
In October we reported that the Supreme Court reversed and remanded this case (Lara v. Paris) back to the Third Circuit (which had already rendered a pro-2A decision). At the time it was a head-scratcher, but in light of today’s decision, it appears that this was not an anti-gun move by the Supreme Court, but simply them honoring the process and doing their due diligence in making sure ALL precedent was being considered in deciding this case.
(As a reminder, the case addresses Pennsylvania laws that temporarily restricted young adults from carrying firearms during declared states of emergency.)
Today’s decision clearly confirms that the 3rd Circuit believes it properly applied Rahimi and yet again arrived at the decision to overturn the District Court’s decision in upholding the ban:
The Supreme Court… remanded the case to us for further consideration in light of Rahimi. According to the Supreme Court’s directive, we have considered Rahimi and its clarification of the analysis outlined… in Bruen. We conclude that our prior analysis reflects the approach taken in Bruen and clarified in Rahimi….Having determined that Rahimi sustains our prior analysis, we will again reverse and remand the District Court’s judgment. Much of what follows is repetitive of our earlier decision, but we provide it as background to the legal analysis and conclusions that follow.
A key aspect of the ruling is the court’s decision to use 1791, the year the Second Amendment was ratified, as the relevant timeframe for understanding its public meaning, rather than 1868, the year the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. The court emphasized that the constitutional right to keep and bear arms should be interpreted based on its meaning at the time of the Second Amendment’s adoption, reflecting the views of those who ratified it. This underscores the court’s reliance on historical context from the founding era to define the scope of Second Amendment rights.
This pro-Second Amendment ruling is potentially good news out of the same court that will be deciding the next step in a challenge against New Jersey’s 2022 law that dramatically limits concealed carry in the state.
