WASHINGTON, D.C. - On Monday morning, June 2nd, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear a Second Amendment case involving challenges to bans on high-capacity magazines and some semi-automatic weapons, including AR-15s.
The challenge was to Maryland's ban on so-called assault weapons, leaving intact a lower court ruling that upheld the law supporting the bans. The high court also declined to hear arguments challenging Rhode Island's ban on high-capacity magazines. A report from the Gateway Pundit noted that the Supreme Court did not explain its decision not to hear the arguments on the cases, but that conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas dissented.
The Supreme Court had already turned away the legal battle over Maryland's law in 2024 because a federal appeals court had yet to rule on it, but the 4th Circuit upheld the measure in August, finding that weapons like the AR-15 could be banned in part because they are outside the scope of the Second Amendment, as reported by CBS News.
With the Supreme Court declining to review that decision from the 4th Circuit, the high court skirts for now a fight over whether the Second Amendment allows states to regulate the rifles that, in some cases, have been used in several mass shootings across the country. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that the Supreme Court would be addressing the AR-15 challenge soon.
"Additional petitions for certiorari will likely be before this Court shortly and, in my view, this Court should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next Term or two," Kavanaugh said in a statement. One of the appeals that the high court declined to hear dealt with Maryland's ban on certain semi-automatic weapons, such as AR and AK-style rifles.
The law, which was enacted after the deadly 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, was challenged by David Snope, a state resident who wants to purchase those types of rifles for self-defense and other purposes. The challengers again sought the Supreme Court's review, arguing in the filing that the justices should "ensure that the Second Amendment itself is not truncated into a limited right to own certain state-approved means of personal self-defense."
In his statement, Kavanaugh called the appeals court's decision "questionable." "Given that millions of Americans own AR-15s and that a significant majority of the states allow possession of those rifles, petitioners have a strong argument that AR-15s are in 'common use' by law-abiding citizens and therefore are protected by the Second Amendment," he wrote. "If so, then the Fourth Circuit would have erred by holding that Maryland's ban on AR-15s complies with the Second Amendment."
Thomas, in a solo dissent, said that the high court should not wait to decide the constitutional of laws banning AR-15s and lamented that the justices have put off addressing the issue long enough, nearly a decade. "Further percolation is of little value when lower courts in the jurisdictions that ban AR-15s appear bent on distorting this court's Second Amendment precedents," he wrote.
"I doubt we would sit idly by if lower courts were to so subvert our precedents involving any other constitutional right. Until we are vigilant in enforcing it, the right to bear arms will remain 'a second-class right,'" he added.
