By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
A coalition of Second Amendment groups is urging the Supreme Court of Maryland to take up the case of a D.C. man convicted of carrying a handgun in Prince George’s County with a valid District of Columbia permit. But the record shows the argument at the center of their amicus brief — a colonial-era “traveler’s exemption” to concealed-carry laws — was never actually considered by the court whose ruling they’re asking to be reversed.
The Stop
On November 21, 2021, Darius Pernell Duvall was a passenger in a car pulled over for speeding in Prince George’s County. Officer Ashley Wigmore, approaching the vehicle, smelled burnt cannabis and a faint odor of alcohol. When backup arrived and the occupants stepped out, Wigmore searched the car and found a loaded handgun in a jacket pocket in the back seat.
Duvall told her he had a permit in his wallet. It was a valid Washington, D.C. concealed carry permit — but Maryland doesn’t recognize any out-of-state permit, so Wigmore arrested him. He was originally charged with five offenses, including one for carrying while under the influence; the trial court granted him a judgment of acquittal on that count at the close of the State’s evidence, before the jury began deliberating. In November 2022, the jury convicted him on two of the remaining four charges — transporting a handgun in a vehicle and transporting a loaded handgun in a vehicle — and acquitted him on the other two. He was sentenced that December to probation, with the underlying prison term entirely suspended.
Two Years in Limbo, Then an Affirmance
Duvall’s appeal, filed in January 2023, sat stayed for roughly two years — a period that lines up closely with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Rahimi and the Maryland Supreme Court’s decision in Fooks v. State, both of which tested how far Second Amendment protections extend post-Bruen and were working their way through the courts over that same span. The stay lifted in mid-2025, and briefing continued, with several extensions on both sides, into January 2026. The case was argued February 6, 2026, before Judges Kathryn Graeff, Rosalyn Tang and Donald Beachley of the Appellate Court of Maryland.
On May 21, 2026, the panel affirmed Duvall’s convictions in an unreported opinion authored by Judge Beachley. The ruling turned less on the merits of Duvall’s Second Amendment claim than on what he’d actually argued below.
The panel found that argument came too late and too thin.
At the circuit court, Duvall’s trial counsel framed the issue almost entirely around the D.C. permit itself, telling the judge that “the gravamen of this Motion is the fact that Mr. Duvall is in possession of a concealed/carry weapons permit from the District of Columbia” and invoking, in a single aside, a “freedom to travel” theory tied to the Commerce Clause. The prosecutor’s response ran a little over a page: Maryland has no reciprocity law with any state.
On appeal, Duvall’s brief shifted toward a more developed argument — that requiring a Maryland permit imposes an “undue burden” on interstate travelers with no historical analogue. But the panel found that argument came too late and too thin. In a footnote, Judge Beachley wrote that the traveler’s-exemption theory “is not sufficiently briefed on appeal” and that Duvall “does not provide any authority” for it beyond a passing reference in his reply brief. Under Maryland Rule 8-131(a), the court declined to consider it at all.
That’s the argument the Second Amendment Foundation is now asking the Supreme Court of Maryland to embrace, in an amicus brief filed July 23, 2026, joined by Maryland Shall Issue, the NRA, the California Rifle & Pistol Association, the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, the Second Amendment Law Center, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and the Cato Institute. The brief leans on a body of colonial- and early-republic-era law exempting travelers from local carry restrictions, tracing it to a 1686 East Jersey statute and citing more than 80 comparable examples compiled in related litigation. “History is clear: travelers from other states were given greater leeway to carry arms than residents,” SAF Director of Legal Research and Education Kostas Moros said in a statement, arguing the theory follows from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Bruen, Wolford and Hemani. It’s a serious historical argument. It is also not the argument the Appellate Court of Maryland ruled on.
It’s a serious historical argument. It is also not the argument the Appellate Court of Maryland ruled on.
What the Court Actually Decided
On the narrower question Duvall did preserve — whether Maryland’s refusal to recognize any out-of-state permit is constitutional as applied to a validly licensed visitor — the panel rejected the claim on the merits, and did so by leaning on the same court’s own prior ruling in a nearly identical case.
In Gardner v. State, an unreported opinion from April 2025 involving a Virginia permit holder charged in Montgomery County, the Appellate Court held that Bruen‘s approval of “shall-issue” licensing regimes doesn’t require states to honor each other’s permits, and that “reciprocity is not mandated under Bruen” absent further guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court or an act of Congress. The Duvall panel found “no reason to deviate from Gardner’s analysis,” and pointed to a 2025 Massachusetts high court ruling reaching the same conclusion on a nonresident permit requirement.
Gardner’s own case went further up the ladder than Duvall’s has so far — and came back empty. The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in Gardner v. Maryland on April 20, 2026, in a one-line order, despite amicus support from the Cato Institute, the Heller Foundation, twelve U.S. senators and two dozen states. One factor commentators have pointed to: Gardner litigated much of her case pro se before securing counsel, arguably leaving a messier record for the justices to work with.
Duvall’s case, by contrast, has been handled primarily by the Office of the Public Defender’s Appellate Division — standard indigent-defense representation, with the Second Amendment coalition’s involvement limited to amicus support rather than direct litigation. Whether that makes for a cleaner vehicle is an open question the Maryland Supreme Court hasn’t yet had reason to answer, since Duvall’s petition asks the court to consider an argument the lower court expressly declined to reach.
Where This Fits
Duvall’s petition lands amid a cluster of Maryland Second Amendment litigation moving through the courts at roughly the same time. The Maryland Supreme Court itself split 6-1 in June 2025’s Fooks v. State, upholding the state’s felon-equivalent firearm dispossession statute over a lone dissent from Justice Jonathan Biran, who argued the majority’s historical-tradition analysis was too permissive. Separately, the Second Amendment Foundation has a “sensitive places” cert petition, Novotny v. Moore, pending before the U.S. Supreme Court since May.
Justice Peter Killough, appointed to the Maryland Supreme Court by Gov. Wes Moore in 2024, has no prior record on a Second Amendment case — Fooks was argued and decided by a panel that didn’t include him. His vote, whenever the court rules on Duvall’s cert petition, will be untested territory.
For now, the question isn’t whether Maryland’s carry-reciprocity policy survives constitutional scrutiny. It’s whether the state’s highest court is willing to consider an argument its own intermediate appellate court never reached.
Sources
This report is based on the Appellate Court of Maryland’s unreported opinion in Duvall v. State, No. 1979, September Term 2022 (filed May 21, 2026), and its unreported opinion in Gardner v. State, No. 1496, September Term 2022 (filed April 18, 2025), along with the Maryland Supreme Court’s opinion in Fooks v. State, No. 24, September Term 2022 (filed June 6, 2025); docket records from the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County (Case No. CJ220120), the Appellate Court of Maryland (ACM-REG-1979-2022) and the Supreme Court of Maryland (SCM-PET-0227-2026), obtained via Maryland Judiciary Case Search; the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket in Gardner v. Maryland, No. 25-5961; the Second Amendment Foundation’s July 23, 2026 press release, “SAF Urges Maryland Supreme Court to Review Interstate Carry Rights Lawsuit”; and reporting from Bearing Arms (“Second Amendment Groups Urge Maryland Supreme Court to Recognize Non-Residents’ Right to Carry,” July 23, 2026) and Second Call Defense’s case analysis of Gardner v. Maryland.
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