On February 11, 2015, Judge O’Connor issued an opinion (available here) that invalidated certain federal laws relating to the buying, transporting, and selling of handguns across state lines. The federal laws, in essence, require that handgun sales crossing state lines go through federal firearm licensees. In other words, federal law “prevents all legally responsible and qualified individuals from directly acquiring handguns from FFLs in every state other than their state of residency[.]”
The Court found that “the federal interstate handgun transfer ban burdens conduct that falls within the scope of the Second Amendment.” The Court then determined that it would apply strict scrutiny to the laws in question. Next, the Court concluded that “Defendants have not shown that the federal interstate handgun transfer ban is narrowly tailored to be the least restrictive means of achieving the Government’s goals under current law. The federal interstate handgun transfer ban is therefore unconstitutional on its face.”
Judge O’Connor also found that the laws would fail constitutional analysis under intermediate scrutiny, and that the laws violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.