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The U.S. Supreme Court let stand an Anne Arundel County ordinance that requires gun shops to provide buyers with information on suicide prevention, gun safety and conflict resolution.
The court, without comment, declined Monday to hear a challenge to the law from a Maryland gun-rights group and four gun shops, which claimed the measure violated their free speech rights by compelling them to provide information they disagreed with.
But county officials said the ordinance only requires “safety-focused and common-sense gun laws” aimed at protecting the public.
“My hope is that gun retailers recognize that providing this information is a good business practice, one that demonstrates their commitment to the safety of their customers and our communities,” County Executive Steuart Pittman said in a prepared statement.
Mark Pennak, the president of Maryland Shall Issue, which challenged the measure, said that while this particular case is over, other jurisdictions are adopting similar laws and other courts “are going to see this problem, so this issue’s not over.”
Montgomery County this spring adopted an ordinance similar to Anne Arundel County’s.
The ordinance requires the Anne Arundel County Health Department to prepare literature on “gun safety, gun training, suicide prevention, mental health and conflict resolution,” and distribute it, free of charge, to any county business that sells guns or ammunition.
The stores have to make the literature “visible and available” in their shops, and must distribute it to anyone buying a gun or ammo.
The ordinance grew out of the county’s Gun Violence Prevention Task Force and the declaration of a public health emergency in the wake of the Capital-Gazette shootings and a rise in suicides. County officials were looking at “a lot of things to try to prevent death and injury by guns, which is unfortunately still a problem,” said Anne Arundel County Councilmember Lisa Rodvien.
She introduced the health-literature bill in late 2021, and it passed in early 2022. Rodvien said she was motivated by frustration at the inability to enact gun control at the federal level, and by the suicide death by firearm of a family member.
“There was a lot of guilt, thinking like what could we have done, wondering if something like having information, immediate access to a suicide hotline” or the kind of literature the health department is providing might have made a difference, she said.
“We thought, ‘Look, what if we got information in people’s hands when they’re purchasing guns?’” Rodvien said. “Because one of the things I had learned is that the risk of firearm by suicide increases exponentially after purchasing a firearm.”
But critics of the law disagreed with the county-provided literature that “asserts that the mere ‘access’ to firearms is a ‘risk factor’ for suicide.” They argued that the county was saying guns caused suicides.
In their petition to the Supreme Court, the gun shop owners said they “disagreed with the implied messages sent by the County’s literature, including the implicit suggestion that ‘the public should not buy guns because they cause suicides.”
“When you tell people that you’re more likely to commit suicide when you have access to firearms, to most people that’s ‘Guns are bad,’” Pennak said.
Requiring them to provide the literature was compelling them to make statements they disagreed with, the opponents said, in violation of their First Amendment rights.
But County Attorney Gregory Swain said the county has never said that guns cause suicides, only that their presence raises the risks.
“We’ve never said that (there’s a causal relationship), we’ve always said that gun ownership is a risk factor, and that’s exactly what the brochure says,” Swain said.
In its petition to the Supreme Court, the county noted that the safety pamphlet was coauthored by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and, “Unsurprisingly, NSSF’s pamphlet does not discourage the use or purchase of firearms.”
The county agreed to put the law on hold while Maryland Shall Issue challenged it in federal court on behalf of gun dealers.
A federal district judge in March 2023 sided with the county, saying that the measure was not compelled speech but commercial speech that was “purely factual and uncontroversial” and could be required.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling in January, sparking the unsuccessful appeal to the Supreme Court.
Rodvien said the courts agreed with the county that the ordinance is “a reasonable government response to an identified issue in the community.”
“The courts said this is something that’s not unusual, we already do this. We put warnings on the side of cigarette packages, we put labels on alcohol, we put warnings about air bags on stickers in our car,” she said.
Pennak called the Fourth Circuit’s ruling “abysmally wrong,” but conceded there is little he can do until a similar law is challenged elsewhere and finds it way back through the courts.
“I think sooner or later some other court of appeals is going to disagree with the Fourth Circuit,” he said.
The county began enforcing the ordinance after the district court ruling was handed down last year. Rodvien said she hopes to see similar measures springing up elsewhere.
“I don’t see any reason why if we’ve said this is allowable at the county level, I’d love to see it statewide,” she said.
