After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right to bear arms last year, several states responded by making it easier to obtain carry permits but harder to use them. That strategy proved to be legally perilous: Federal judges ruled that sweeping restrictions on where people could carry handguns for self-defense in New York and New Jersey were inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. A recent preliminary injunction continues that trend, barring Maryland from enforcing its restrictions on firearms near public demonstrations, its ban on carrying guns in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, and its presumptive rule against guns in other businesses open to the public.

U.S. District Judge George L. Russell’s September 29 opinion in Kipke v. Moore, which addresses two lawsuits by Maryland carry permit holders and gun rights groups, confirms that politicians were mistaken in thinking they could defy Bruen by expanding the list of “sensitive places” where firearms are not allowed. …

The Bruen test clearly raises questions that invite judicial disagreement. Judges must decide, for example, how much weight to give laws from different historical periods and when the analogs cited by the state are numerous, similar, and representative enough to establish a relevant historical tradition. In practice, judges’ answers may depend partly on their preexisting attitudes toward gun control, although such considerations are not supposed to figure in their historical and legal analysis. But this ruling shows that the Bruen test, by foreclosing the sort of “interest-balancing” analysis that courts commonly used to uphold gun control laws prior to that decision, has real teeth even when it is applied by judges who resent its strictures.