They say that a right delayed is a right denied.

I'd argue that it depends on the reason for the delay, but when it comes from the government, that's most definitely true. That's especially accurate when the right in question is the right to keep and bear arms, a right many don't exercise until they have some reason to fear for their safety.

That's what always enters my head when we start talking about waiting periods for gun sales.

Plus, in a post-Bruen world, I genuinely don't see what kind of analog anyone can find to justify it.

Those are probably going to be coming up soon as an appeals court ponders New Mexico's seven-day waiting period law.

The fate of a New Mexico law that requires gun purchasers to wait seven days before they can acquire the weapon may rest on whether the Tenth Circuit thinks the law is comparable to age restrictions on the right to bear arms.

New Mexico Deputy General Counsel Kyle Duffy told the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit during oral argument Tuesday that the appeals court’s earlier reasoning in Rocky Mountain Gun Owners v. Polis squarely applies here. That opinion upheld a Colorado law that requires gun purchasers to be at least 21 years old. It said that Colorado’s age limitation was outside the scope of the Second Amendment, because it imposes conditions on the commercial sale of guns, not the right to bear arms.

Matthew Rowen of Clement & Murphy PLLC, who represented the plaintiffs challenging the New Mexico cooling-off period, said that Rocky Mountain was wrongly decided. But even if the Tenth Circuit applies Rocky Mountain, it can still rule in favor of the challengers, because New Mexico’s law is overbroad and is triggered by a person’s desire to exercise their right to own a gun, he said.

Similar laws in other states are also being challenged in court: Maine’s three-day cooling-off period was stayed in February by a federal district court; a challenge to Colorado’s three-day cooling-off period was also voluntarily dismissed in the Tenth Circuit by Rocky Mountain Gun Owners.

When analyzing a gun regulation, the US Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen held that courts must first ask if the regulation impairs conduct that falls under the scope of the Second Amendment. If it does, the government must show it’s “consistent with this Nation’s historical traditions of firearm regulation.”

I will note, however, that while I'm not an attorney, I find serious fault with the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners v. Polis decision that New Mexico is leaning on in defending this law.

The courts have long found that the buying of guns is a necessary component of exercising your right to keep and bear arms. If you don't have the ability to acquire arms on your own, then you effectively have no right to keep them in any meaningful way. You're depending on a third party to bestow them upon you, which turns the right into a privilege. It's just one that a private citizen can bestow, rather than the state.

Even if you accept that decision, though, it's a different matter entirely since it allows someone else to go and buy a gun immediately for someone under the age of 21 and gift it to them should they find themselves in some grave danger. A seven-day waiting period, however, impacts every person buying a gun in a gun store. As the state also has universal background checks, that means the impact will be widespread.

Of course, Rowen essentially says the same thing above, so that's just a long way to say I agree, I suppose.

The truth of the matter, though, is that this is all ridiculous because there's nothing in Bruen that carves out exemptions for the buying and selling of firearms. It doesn't say that such laws are outside of the scope of the Second Amendment, probably because it takes a lot of mental contortions to make an argument like that.

Unfortunately, anti-gun courts are pretty good at those contortions.

We'll see how this one goes.