The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear cases challenging gun control laws in Rhode Island and Maryland, allowing the gun prohibition lobby to celebrate, but according to USA Today, two justices think the time has come for determining whether modern semiautomatic rifles and standard capacity magazines are protected by then Second Amendment.
The newspaper is quoting Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh stating, “in my view, this Court should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon.” Officials at two gun rights organizations involved as plaintiffs in the Maryland case are now weighing in.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who authored the 2022 Bruen ruling overturning New York’s century-old gun permit law as unconstitutional, wrote in his dissent, “I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America. That question is of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR-15 owners throughout the country.”
But Reuters, which continues to identify gun control organizations as “gun safety groups” quoted David Pucino, legal director at the anti-gun Giffords Law Center, who stated, “Courts have repeatedly upheld laws limiting access to highly dangerous weapons. They are proven measures that protect families and reduce gun violence.”
At issue are a ban on semi-autos such as the AR-15 in Maryland and magazines holding more than ten cartridges in Rhode Island. Ten states and the District of Columbia have restricted so-called “assault weapons,” USA Today said.
“The Supreme Court’s decision to deny cert in Snope v. Brown is an egregious error that sidesteps addressing an important issue which requires the Court’s intervention,” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut, executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation, one of the plaintiffs in the case. “Millions of Americans continue to be disenfranchised from exercising their complete Second Amendment rights by virtue of these categorical bans. While Justice Kavanaugh’s statement insinuates the Court may hear one of the many other challenges percolating in the lower courts, as Justice Thomas points out, their input is of little value as they continue to distort the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment precedents. SAF will continue to aggressively litigate its seven other challenges to bans on “assault weapons” and spare no resource to ensure the right to keep and bear arms is not continued to be treated as ‘a second-class right.’”
“However,” noted Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, another plaintiff “it is encouraging Justice Brett Kavaaugh has signaled it is more than likely the Court will hear one of several other challenges to bans on semiautomatic rifles that are currently in the legal pipeline.
“We recognize,” Gottlieb continued, “that the court is currently inundated with a heavy case load that includes well over a hundred lawsuits filed by left wing interests, many of which are on the Court’s emergency docket, making it impossible to hear many pending cases in an orderly fashion.”
“The modern semiautomatic is definitely in common use,” Gottlieb observed. “Our primary concern is that American gun owners will have to once again wait for the high court to accept a case and determine whether state level bans violate the Constitution’s Second Amendment, which we definitely believe is the case. Remember, a right delayed is a right denied.”
In its coverage of the court’s decision, CBS News noted that Thomas and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito dissented. And the CBS report used an interesting term, saying, “In declining to review the decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, the high court skirts for now a fight over whether the Second Amendment allows states to regulate the rifles that have been used in a wave of mass shootings.” The high court, in other words, wants to avoid taking such cases, which Bloomberg Law acknowledged, “could have had a broad impact had the court accepted them.”
Bloomberg Law reported, “The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Maryland law on a 10-5 vote. Writing for the majority, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III said the measure outlawed ‘military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense.’”
But modern semi-auto rifles are in common use, with some estimates going well beyond 20 million in circulation now. With this decision to not hear a case, there is new potential for other states to attempt some sort of restrictive regulation or a ban.
USA Today noted in its report that Rhode Island’s magazine ban was upheld by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which decided the ban does not burden the right of self-defense.
Just because these cases have been declined does not mean the issue is dead. USA Today noted that Justice Kavanaugh suggested that allowing the lower courts to continue with cases still in progress would enable the high court’s “ultimate decision-making on the AR-15 issue.”
