Supreme Court declines to hear challenge against Maryland gun law

Yahoo

3 days ago

June 2 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court announced Monday that it won't hear a Second Amendment challenge to a Maryland law that bans semiautomatic rifles, such as the AR-15.
Despite approvals to hear the case from Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued the statement that the Court has denied the petition for review.
However, despite his refusal to hear the challenge, Kavanaugh's response seemed to indicate his opinion would stand against the law in question.
"Americans today possess an estimated 20 to 30 million AR-15s," he wrote. "And AR-15s are legal in 41 of the 50 States, meaning that the states such as Maryland that prohibit AR-15s are something of an outlier."
"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 continued.
Kavanaugh further explained that although the Court denied the challenge Monday, it doesn't mean he feels it isn't "worthy of review," and that in his opinion, "this Court should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next term or two."
Justice Thomas, in his dissent of the refusal to hear the dispute, wrote that he feels that "It is difficult to see how Maryland's categorical prohibition on AR-15s passes muster" under the framework of the Second Amendment.
Thomas declared the Amendment protects all things considered "arms," and that it falls on Maryland to show that a ban on AR-15s is "consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."
It was the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit's decision in August of 2024 to uphold the Maryland law because "assault weapons at issue fall outside the ambit of protection offered by the Second Amendment because, in essence, they are military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense."
The decision further stated that Maryland's law "fits comfortably within our nation's tradition of firearms regulation."
Thomas called out the Fourth Circuit's decision in his dissent several times, and among the mistakes he purports it made are that "AR-15s fall within the historic exception for dangerous and unusual weapons," as "Weapons in common use today for self-defense are fully protected."
"Our Constitution allows the American people, not the government, to decide which weapons are useful for self-defense," Thomas added, and concluded with "Until we resolve whether the Second Amendment forecloses that possibility, law-abiding AR-15 owners must rely on the goodwill of a federal agency to retain their means of self-defense. That is no constitutional guarantee at all."
Justices Alito and Gorsuch did not note why they would have heard the challenge.