Gun owners have won a significant victory in Maryland, with the state Supreme Court tossing several gun control ordinances adopted by Montgomery County in the wake of the Bruen decision in 2022.
Maryland legislators passed their own Bruen response bill after the state’s “may issue” concealed carry permitting system was ruled unconstitutional by SCOTUS, but Montgomery County’s measures were even more restrictive.
The Maryland Supreme Court opinion is thick with legalese and citations to various sections of code that can make it a little difficult to understand the scope of its decision, but the 2A group Maryland Shall Issue provided a succinct summary of the ruling on Tuesday evening.
The Supreme Court of Maryland issued its decision today in our challenge to the Montgomery County ordinance that basically banned carry by permit holders through out the County. On that issue we completely prevailed and the County lost. Specifically the Court held that the…
— Maryland Shall Issue (@MD_Shall_Issue) April 28, 2026
The Supreme Court of Maryland issued its decision today in our challenge to the Montgomery County ordinance that basically banned carry by permit holders through out the County. On that issue we completely prevailed and the County lost.
Specifically the Court held that the County’s ban “is not a local law because of its application to holders of State-issued wear-and-carry permits traveling on public highways who cross within 100 yards of a place of public assembly.” That means that permit holders may carry in Montgomery County without regard to the County’s ordinance as long as they remain in compliance with State law. By any measure, we count that as a huge WIN!
The whole point of the County’s ordinance was to make it impossible for permit holders to carry in the County after the decision by the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen. On that point, the County lost completely.
The Maryland Supreme Court issued other rulings as well, holding that County’s regulation of so-called “ghost guns” was preempted by State law “to the extent it includes firearms that have been serialized in compliance with federal and State law.” That means that persons may transport personally made firearms to FFLs and FFLs in the County [and] may serialize personally made frames and receivers in accordance with State law.
The Court also struck down as preempted a section of the County’s ordinance which banned a “broad swath of otherwise lawful (and constitutionally protected) conduct by adults merely because it occurs in the presence of a minor, without any apparent connection to whether that activity might result in minors gaining unsupervised access to those firearms.” The lesson to County residents and others: get a carry permit and carry in accordance with State law.
The definition of “public assembly” created by Montgomery County is so broad that it places large swathes of the county completely off-limits to lawful carry. When questioned at oral argument about whether the law applies to a permit holder driving through the county on a state highway that runs within 100 yards of a place of public assembly, the Montgomery County’s attorney said that it does.
The solution for concealed carry permittees, according to that attorney, was twofold. They could either identify every place of public assembly in the county and avoid those areas, or place their firearms in an “enclosed case or locked firearms rack” while traveling through the county.
The Maryland Supreme Court wasn’t impressed with either remedy offered by Montgomery County.
In effect, the County’s regulation creates pockets of roadway throughout the County’s lengthy and complex highway system in which travelers with State-issued wear-and-carry permits are banned from carrying firearms based on the proximity of those segments of roadway to buildings or locationst hat might not abut or even be visible from the road. That highway system carries large volumes of traffic coming from or going to the seven jurisdictions directly bordering the County—Prince George’s, Frederick, Carroll, and Howard Counties in Maryland; Fairfax and Loudoun Counties in Virginia; and Washington, D.C.—including traffic originating in other locations throughout Maryland and beyond. Indeed, highways passing through Montgomery County such as Interstates 495 and 270, US Route 29, and State Route 97 serve as primary corridors of travel for much of the State of Maryland into Washington,D.C. and portions of Virginia, and vice versa. Applying the County’s regulation in that way imposes a burden on travel “of significant interest not just to any one county, but rather to more than one geographical subdivision, or even to the entire state.”
This is an important win for gun owners in Maryland. Anti-gun politicians in the state could react to the ruling by limiting or repealing the state’s firearm preemption law and allowing counties like Montgomery to expressly forbid firearms in any locations county officials choose, but that would invite further challenges that are based on violations of the Second Amendment, not just conflicts with Maryland statute.
The definition of “public assembly” would still pose problems for Montgomery County, given that it would seem to encompass locations that are hardly “sensitive” in nature, like eight-lane highways and virtually every “gathering of individuals to collectively express their constitutional right to protest or assemble.” In the latter example, it would be impossible for concealed carry holders to know when and where a gathering might be taking place, and they could easily run afoul of the law without even realizing it.
Though the larger fight over the right to keep and bear arms in Maryland continues, we should celebrate wins when we get them, and this is a victory. Montgomery County is going to have to rewrite its ordinance to comply with the state Supreme Court, and concealed carry holders who live in or travel through the county will benefit from the court’s conclusions.
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