4th Circuit upholds conviction of man who traveled to MD with legal gun while under indictment

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Friday ruled that the Second Amendment doesn’t stop the government from prosecuting people under indictment who cross state lines with a legally owned firearm.

A three-judge Fourth Circuit panel on Sept. 12 affirmed the conviction of Brandon Glen Jackson, who was under indictment in Arizona when he was arrested in Hagerstown in February 2022.

Jackson’s felony indictment under state law, for “misconduct involving firearms,” and a federal law banning traveling across state lines with a gun while under felony indictment are fairly straightforward.

But the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision, which expanded gun rights, threw the prosecution into question.

The decision required the court to undertake a multi-step “text-and-history” test, which requires the court to examine whether “the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct,” and allows gun restrictions only within the “historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.”

The court examined late-18th and early 19th-century laws on guns, bail and pretrial detention.

“Brandon Glen Jackson traveled with a gun across state lines while indicted for a state-law felony,” the opinion, written by Fourth Circuit Chief Judge Albert Diaz, begins.

“That’s a federal crime. The question before us is whether prosecuting Jackson for that act violated the Second Amendment.”

The court found that Jackson’s conduct was presumptively protected by the Second Amendment, but that the government overcame that presumption. Diaz was joined by Judges James Wynn and Stephanie Thacker.

The Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment. The office of the Maryland Federal Public Defender, which represented Jackson, did not respond to a request for comment.

“Jackson’s conduct is entitled to Second Amendment protection, but two different regulatory traditions permit the government to punish him all the same,” Diaz wrote.

“Our nation’s history and tradition of gun regulation shows that those accused of possessing unlawful weapons can be temporarily disarmed today. And our nation’s tradition of categorically disarming potentially dangerous groups separately justifies Jackson’s prosecution.”

As applied to Jackson, Diaz wrote, the law “presents no constitutional problem.”