Today, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held New Mexico’s seven-day waiting period for firearm purchases unconstitutional in Ortega v. Grisham, a case brought by the National Rifle Association and Mountain States Legal Foundation, with the support of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
“In courtrooms across America, the NRA is successfully leading the charge to protect law-abiding Americans’ Second Amendment rights,” said NRA-ILA Executive Director, John Commerford. “The 10th Circuit has sided with the NRA and held that radical waiting period laws are indeed unconstitutional. 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.”
New Mexico’s law requires purchasers of firearms to “cool off” for seven days before taking possession of a newly purchased firearm—even after passing a background check and demonstrating that they are not prohibited from owning firearms.
The Tenth Circuit held that New Mexico’s law violates the Second Amendment. Judge Tymkovich, writing for the court, determined that the right to keep and bear arms necessarily includes the lawful acquisition of firearms and, therefore, “cooling off” waiting periods infringe on Second Amendment-protected conduct. Next, the court concluded that waiting periods are a modern invention that are unsupported by our nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
New Mexico’s proffered historical analogues—intoxication laws, licensing regimes, and restrictions that applied only to certain targeted groups—were found insufficient to justify New Mexico’s waiting period law. First, the historical intoxication laws were deemed improper analogues because they prevented the possession of a firearm only during the period of intoxication, not for an arbitrary time period even after the individual sobered up. Second, New Mexico’s law is unlike licensing regimes, the court noted, because New Mexico’s law assumes everyone is dangerous until they have waited an arbitrary amount of “cooling off” time. Finally, the court determined that New Mexico’s law is distinguishable from the restrictions on targeted groups because—in addition to the dubious discriminatory biases underlying those bans—New Mexico’s law is not targeted at all; it applies indiscriminately to the entire populace.
The case will now return to the District Court for the District of New Mexico for the entry of a preliminary injunction.
Please stay tuned to www.nraila.org for future updates on NRA-ILA’s ongoing efforts to defend your constitutional rights.
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