Maryland, like most other blue states, doesn't recognize any concealed carry licenses other than the ones issued by its own state police. In order for visitors to lawfully carry in Maryland, they must first undergo 16 hours of firearm training (including a live fire exercise), submit their fingerprints via LiveScan (which may require visiting the state to find an approved location where fingerprints can be taken), and fork over a $75 application fee.
That's an awful lot of work, especially for those who might only occasionally visit the state or simply drive through it on their way to somewhere else. Frankly, even residents of northern Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania or Washington, D.C. who might spend time in Maryland on a regular basis shouldn't be subject to arrest and imprisonment just because they're carrying a firearm with a license Maryland doesn't recognize.
D.C. resident Darius Duvall, though, is facing that exact predicament. In 2021, Duvall was a passenger in a vehicle in Prince George's County that was pulled over for speeding. When officers searched the vehicle after allegedly smelling marijuana, they found a loaded handgun in the pocket of a jacket in the rear seat. Duvall told officers that he had a permit for the firearm in his wallet. The officer looked through his wallet and found a handgun permit issued by Washington, D.C., but since Maryland doesn't recognize D.C.'s permits Duvall was charged with a number of offenses, including transporting a handgun in a vehicle and transporting a loaded handgun on his person.
Duvall argued that Maryland's lack of recognition of out-of-state permits violated his Second Amendment rights, but a jury still convicted him for transporting a handgun in a vehicle and transporting a loaded handgun in a vehicle.
Duvall's appeal has now reached the Maryland Supreme Court, and a coalition of Second Amendment groups including the Second Amendment Foundation, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, National Rifle Association, California Rifle & Pistol Association, Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, Maryland Shall Issue, Second Amendment Law Center, and the Cato Institute have filed an amicus brief with the court in defense of Duvall and other gun owners.
The brief argues that Maryland's lack of reciprocity "threatens responsible, licensed carriers nationwide," and points to a 2022 case involving another gun owner who faced charges after stopping an armed attacker at a bar.
Lloyd Muldrow, a Marine veteran and self-defense instructor,s topped an attack by an armed assailant in a Baltimore bar. For his heroism, he would later receive the Carnegie Medal, which recognizes those who perform extraordinary acts of heroism in civilian life. But before that recognition, he suffered the humiliation of arrest and prosecution solely because he carried a firearm in Maryland with a Virgina carry permit, which Maryland refused to honor. As reported, “police thanked him—and then they arrested him.”
Muldrow ended up getting probation in that case, but something tells me that if his gun had been discovered after he pulled over on a traffic stop instead of stopping an armed assailant at a bar, the criminal justice system wouldn't have been nearly as lenient.
The amici point out that the Supreme Court has already stated the Second Amendment protects “the general right to publicly carry arms for self-defense.”
That right cannot tolerate each state having the power to force individuals from every other state to jump through time-consuming and often costly hoops before it deigns to allow them to carry a firearm within its borders. Interstate visitors are Americans, yet states like Maryland treat them as suspect foreigners that need to be re-vetted before exercising a fundamental right. As this brief will concisely show, our historical tradition demands exactly the opposite.
The amicus brief highlights the historical tradition of "traveler's exemptions" to local and state carry regulations, arguing the practice was so widespread that "justifies this Court summarily reversing" Duvall's conviction.
This tradition began in the colonial era. In 1686, the Province of East Jersey prohibited “privately” wearing various weapons but exempted “all strangers, travelling upon their lawful occasions thro’ this Province, behaving themselves peaceably.” An 1813 Kentucky law was perhaps the earliest post-founding example, prohibiting the concealed carry of certain weapons “unless when travelling on a journey.” An 1820 Indiana law was similar, limiting its concealed carry ban by stating it “shall not be so construed as to affect travellers.”
... Dozens more examples exist, and a recent lawsuit painstakingly compiled over 80 of them.
The exception for travelers was so widely accepted that future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote that, whether or not prohibitions on the concealed carry of weapons are constitutional, carry by travelers is generally a recognized right:
As the Constitution of the United States, and the constitutions of several of the states, in terms more or less comprehensive, declare the right of the people to keep and bear arms, it has been a subject of grave discussion, in some of the state courts, whether a statute prohibiting persons, when not on a journey, or as travellers, from wearing or carrying concealed weapons, be constitutional.
The amici also head off what is likely to be Maryland's chief argument against the use of these traveler's exemptions; many of these historical laws were written to protect travelers only while they were traveling through the state or between cities in the state, and they would not apply after the traveler had stopped at a destination for more than a short time.
The brief points out that even many of those laws allowed travelers to carry openly after they had interrupted their travels, which is not an option for those traveling through Maryland today.
History is clear, and it tells us that Maryland must—at minimum—recognize carry permits issued by other states to law-abiding adults in line with the historical traveler’s exception laws. The traveler’s exception laws are directly on point, well-represented in our history, and uncontroversial. They definitively decide this case in Petitioner’s favor.
It's a good argument, and one that I hope the Maryland Supreme Court will accept. If not, Darius Duvall has one more shot at appealing his conviction by asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant cert to his case. SCOTUS rejected a similar challenge to Maryland's lack of reciprocity last term, but Duvall's case seems to be a pretty good vehicle for the justices to use to expand on Bruen's recognition of the right to bear arms if they want to.
