A 2024 state law requiring a 7-day waiting period for the purchase of firearms will not go into effect, at least for now.
A federal appeals court on Tuesday agreed with challengers to the law, backed by the National Rifle Association, who sued to block one of Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s cornerstone gun laws.
“Cooling-off periods do not fit into any historically grounded exceptions to the right to keep and bear arms, and burden conduct within the Second Amendment’s scope,” the 2-1 decision by a three judge panel said.
The “historically grounded exceptions” framework was created by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 in a decision that overturned decades of precedent allowing for reasonable regulations on gun purchases and possession.
NRA-ILA Executive Director John Commerford says the case was an important part of the organization’s national agenda to remove gun laws. “The 10th Circuit has sided with the NRA and held that radical waiting period laws are indeed unconstitutional,” he said in a statement this afternoon. “This decision not only impacts gun owners in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma, but serves as a key piece in dismantling similar gun control laws across the country.”
Lujan Grisham hinted that the state may seek further appeals. “This ruling ignores a recent binding Tenth Circuit precedent that upheld Colorado’s law barring gun purchases by anyone under the age of 21—a law that requires 18-year-olds to wait three years to purchase a weapon… We are reviewing our legal options in reaction to today’s misguided ruling by the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.”
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