It's
been a bad week for What's-His-Name.
Former
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley dropped out of the Democrat
presidential race Monday night after a predictably pitiful showing in
Iowa.
Then on Thursday,
the Fourth Circuit Court struck down his
signature "assault weapons" ban, rammed
through in Democrats' exploitative gun-grabbing frenzy after Sandy
Hook. The Maryland law — a ban he promised to replicate at the national
level if elected president — prohibited some semiautomatic rifles and
so-called high-capacity magazines (by which they mean standard
capacity). But the court concluded those instruments meet the Supreme
Court's measure of being "in common use by law-abiding citizens," and
the three-judge panel sent the case back to U.S. District Court with
instructions to apply "strict scrutiny."
Here's the money quote
from the ruling:
"In
our view, Maryland law implicates the core protection of the Second
Amendment — 'the right of law-abiding responsible citizens to use arms
in defense of hearth and home,' District of Columbia v. Heller, 554
U.S. 570, 635 (2008), and we are compelled by Heller and McDonald v.
City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), as well as our own precedent in
the wake of these decisions, to conclude that the burden is substantial
and strict scrutiny is the applicable standard of review for
Plaintiffs' Second Amendment claim."
In other words, though other
appeals courts have failed to uphold the Constitution,
the Fourth Circuit says the Maryland ban
clearly violates the Second Amendment, and the lower court needs to
figure that out.
Gun writer Bob Owens explains the significance, writing,
"If
the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision stands (it will almost
certainly be appealed) and the courts hold that strict scrutiny should
apply to Second Amendment cases as they do every other law restricting
constitutional rights, then most of the gun control laws in the United
States will eventually fall like dominoes."
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And things 
