Supreme Court leaves in place state bans on some semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity gun magazines

Yahoo

2 days ago

The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear arguments in a significant Second Amendment challenge to Maryland's ban on certain semi-automatic weapons, a move that leaves the state's law in place.
Maryland's ban, enacted after the deadly 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, prohibits the sale or ownership of certain semi-automatic weapons such as AR- and AK-style rifles. The law was challenged by David Snope, a state resident who wants to purchase those rifles for self-defense and other purposes.
The Supreme Court also declined to hear a challenge to Rhode Island's ban on high-capacity gun magazines, leaving that law in place.
Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented from the court's decision not to hear the pair of cases.
The 2022 Rhode Island law prohibits the possession of large-capacity feeding devices or magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. It requires owners of such devices to either modify them to fit the 10-round limit, sell them to a firearms dealer, remove them from Rhode Island or hand them over to law enforcement.
The law required such action to be taken within 180 days of its passage, after which time violators faced up to five years in prison.
Meanwhile, in the Maryland case involving automatic rifles, the Richmond-based federal appeals court upheld Maryland's law over the summer, finding that the guns at issue are 'dangerous and unusual weapons' and therefore are not covered by the Second Amendment's protections. The majority also concluded that there were historical analogues to the Maryland statute that were adopted by state legislatures across the country in the 19th and 20th century.
US Circuit Judge Harvie Wilkinson, who was named to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, wrote for the court that 'we decline to wield the Constitution to declare that military-style armaments which have become primary instruments of mass killing and terrorist attacks in the United States are beyond the reach of our nation's democratic processes.'
In dissent, US Circuit Judge Julius Richardson, a Trump nominee, wrote that the majority opinion 'disregards the Founders' wisdom and replaces it with its own.'
Following the Supreme Court's blockbuster 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which struck down a strict requirement in New York that residents show cause to obtain a carry permit, the justices have largely avoided major guns cases. In July, for instance, the court declined to take up a challenge to a similar ban on assault-style weapons in Illinois.
The decisions have had the practical effect of leaving the gun prohibitions in place amid a fierce debate playing out in lower courts over exactly what the Supreme Court meant by requiring firearm laws to be 'consistent with this nation's historical tradition.'
Last year, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law that prohibits Americans who are the subject of certain domestic abuse restraining orders from owning a weapon, despite the fact that no identical law existed at the time of the nation's founding.
Thomas said in a solo dissent on Monday that the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals had erred in upholding the Maryland law.
The prohibition, Thomas wrote, could not be squared with the 2022 decision in Bruen, which he authored, that said the nation's gun laws must have a connection to history to survive constitutional scrutiny.
'It is difficult to see how Maryland's categorical prohibition on AR–15s passes muster under this framework,' Thomas wrote in dissent.
This story has been updated with additional details.