In Engage Armament v. Montgomery County*, Maryland’s high court rules the county’s post-*Bruen overreach crossed constitutional lines — but leaves some local gun authority intact
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
ANNAPOLIS — The Supreme Court of Maryland issued a sweeping but carefully drawn ruling Tuesday in Engage Armament LLC v. Montgomery County, striking down the centerpiece of the county’s post-Bruen gun control package — a near-total ban on concealed carry by state-licensed permit holders — while leaving other portions of the county’s firearms code partially intact.
The opinion, authored by Chief Justice Fader and joined by the full seven-justice court, was filed April 28. It concludes a multi-year legal battle that began in 2021 when Engage Armament, a federally licensed firearms dealer based in Montgomery County, joined Maryland Shall Issue (MSI) and several individual permit holders in challenging amendments to Chapter 57 of the Montgomery County Code.
The Highway Problem That Sank the Ordinance
The most consequential holding — and the clearest rebuke to the county — involved Montgomery County’s redefinition of “place of public assembly” and its removal of the carry permit exemption that had previously allowed state-licensed holders to carry throughout the county.
The amendments significantly expanded the definition of “place of public assembly” and, critically, removed an exception to the carry prohibition for holders of a state-issued handgun wear-and-carry permit. The practical effect was to make lawful carry almost impossible in the county without running afoul of the ordinance.
At oral argument, the county’s own attorney acknowledged the law applied to permit holders driving on state highways that passed within 100 yards of a place of public assembly. The county’s proposed solution was for permit holders to either identify every place of public assembly in the county and avoid those areas, or place their firearms in an enclosed case while traveling through.
The Maryland Supreme Court was not persuaded. The court found that the ordinance created pockets of roadway throughout the county’s highway system where travelers with state-issued carry permits were banned from carrying based on the proximity of those road segments to buildings that might not even be visible from the road. The court specifically noted that highways, including Interstates 495 and 270, US Route 29, and State Route 97, serve as primary travel corridors connecting Maryland to Washington, D.C., and Virginia — and that burdening travel on those corridors was a matter of statewide, not merely local, concern.
That interstate burden proved fatal to the ordinance under Maryland constitutional law. The court held that the county’s ban “is not a local law because of its application to holders of State-issued wear-and-carry permits traveling on public highways who cross within 100 yards of a place of public assembly.” A law with that degree of extraterritorial impact, the court concluded, is a general law — and enacting general laws is the exclusive province of the General Assembly, not charter counties.
Ghost Guns and the Minor Provision
The court also struck down significant portions of the county’s ghost gun regulations and its restrictions on firearms conduct in the presence of minors.
Under Criminal Law § 4-209(b)(1)(i), the authority granted to local jurisdictions to regulate firearms “with respect to minors” authorizes regulation of adult behavior that might reasonably result in minors gaining unsupervised access to firearms — but it does not authorize local regulation of the mere possession of firearms by adults simply because they are in the presence of a minor. The county’s ordinance swept far beyond that line.
On ghost guns, the court’s ruling was narrower but still significant. The county’s regulation of serialized, personally made firearms — those already brought into compliance with federal and state law — was found preempted. That means residents may lawfully transport such firearms to licensed dealers within the county for serialization, and dealers may process those transactions under state authority.
What the County Kept
The ruling was not a total rout for Montgomery County. The court found that the county did not exceed its authority in regulating firearms within 100 yards of parks, places of worship, schools, libraries, courthouses, legislative assemblies, recreational facilities, multipurpose exhibition facilities, and polling places. Those locations are direct analogues to the categories expressly authorized by state statute, and the county’s regulations covering them survived.
However, the county exceeded its authority in regulating firearms within 100 yards of hospitals, community health centers, long-term care facilities, childcare facilities, government buildings as the county defined them, and gatherings of individuals assembling to exercise their constitutional right to protest. The latter category created a particularly absurd enforcement problem: it would be impossible for a concealed carry holder to know in advance when and where a protest might occur, meaning they could violate the ordinance without any awareness that a prohibited gathering was taking place.
Five Years of Litigation
The case originated in May 2021 when MSI, Engage Armament, ICE Firearms & Defensive Training, and several county residents filed suit challenging Bill 4-21. After Bruen was decided in June 2022, the county responded not by scaling back but by doubling down, passing additional legislation in November 2022 that further expanded firearms restrictions.
A circuit court judge who had previously ruled in the challengers’ favor wrote that the county “wanted, among other things, to largely eliminate the State granted right to wear and carry a firearm in the County, even when the individual held a State issued concealed carry permit,” and that the ordinance “effectively bans the concealed carry of a firearm in Montgomery County outside of one’s home or business.” That finding, now vindicated by the state’s highest court, underscores just how deliberate the county’s effort was.
The case now returns to the Appellate Court of Maryland with instructions to affirm in part and reverse in part the circuit court’s summary judgment, vacate the prior declaratory and injunctive relief orders, and remand to the circuit court for entry of new orders consistent with the Supreme Court’s opinion.
What Comes Next
Montgomery County will now have to rewrite its ordinance to comply with the ruling, and concealed carry holders who live in or travel through the county will benefit from the court’s conclusions. The county has not announced a response.
One path forward available to Annapolis Democrats would be to narrow or repeal the state’s firearm preemption statute — but doing so would shift the legal battleground from state preemption law to the Second Amendment itself, where the legal environment for gun control restrictions has grown increasingly hostile since Bruen.
For now, the message from Maryland’s highest court is unambiguous: a county government cannot use creative ordinance drafting to nullify rights the General Assembly and the U.S. Constitution have granted to law-abiding Marylanders.
Sources: Engage Armament LLC v. Montgomery County, No. 9, September Term 2025 (Md. Apr. 28, 2026), full opinion via CourtListener and the Maryland Courts website; Maryland Shall Issue (@MD_Shall_Issue), post-ruling statement via X, April 28, 2026; Montgomery County v. Engage Armament LLC, No. 2319, Sept. Term 2023, 2025 WL 289153 (Md. App. Ct. Jan. 24, 2025); Cam Edwards, “Maryland Supreme Court Strikes Down Local Gun Control Laws,” Bearing Arms, April 29, 2026; William J. Ford, “Judge: Montgomery County gun law preempted by state law,” Maryland Matters, November 28, 2023.
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