Latest news with #gunrights
Washington Post
a day ago
- Business
- Washington Post
Citigroup drops gun-seller restrictions adopted after Parkland shooting
Citigroup is ending a seven-year-old policy that blocked its banking services for retailers that sold firearms to buyers under age 21 and those who did not pass a background check, reversing a high-profile decision made in the weeks after the 2018 Parkland school shooting. Citi, one of the largest banks in the country, was lauded by gun safety advocates in March 2018 when it announced its policy, which included banning retailers that sold high-capacity magazines or bump stocks, like the one used by the Parkland shooter. Other Wall Street banks soon followed suit. The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, left 17 students and staff members dead. On Tuesday, Citi reversed course, saying it would no longer have a specific firearms policy. The White House praised the change, which comes as the Trump administration has increasingly pressured banks to drop restrictions it views as unfriendly to conservative causes. 'It's encouraging to see companies like Citi embrace this by ending their discriminatory policies against millions of law-abiding gun owners in America,' White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in an email. 'Any attempt to abridge Americans' constitutional right to keep and bear arms through misguided and targeted politicization is irresponsible, and the Trump Administration is committed to ending these practices once and for all.' Trump regularly suggested on the campaign trail that major banks were hostile to conservatives. While campaigning in 2024, he said he would implement regulations to 'stop banks and regulators from trying to de-bank you.' At the World Economic Forum in January, Trump publicly criticized Bank of America's chief executive, claiming without evidence that the company and others discriminate against conservatives. On Tuesday, Ed Skyler, head of enterprise services and public affairs at Citi, said in a blog post that the company was aware of concerns about 'fair access' to banking services and was making the changes to comply with executive orders as well as new regulations and federal laws related to that issue. The 2018 policy, Skyler wrote, was meant to encourage retailers to adopt best practices around firearms sales as 'prudent risk management' and didn't address the manufacturing of firearms. 'Many retailers have been following these best practices, and we hope communities and lawmakers will continue to seek out ways to prevent the tragic consequences of gun violence,' Skyler wrote. Citigroup adopted the policy in 2018 amid public clamor for businesses to act against gun violence in the wake of the Parkland shooting. Dick's Sporting Goods, Walmart, Kroger and other retailers made changes to their firearms sales policies or dropped gun-related discounts and partnership programs. 'As a society, we all know that something needs to change. And as a company, we feel we must do our part,' Skyler wrote in a 2018 statement announcing the policy. Gun violence prevention advocates said Citi was capitulating to Trump with the policy reversal instead of protecting children. 'Seven years ago, after 17 of my peers and teachers were murdered, Citi found the courage to say 'no more' — no more financing gun sales to teenagers,' Jackie Corin, a Parkland survivor and executive director of the student-led gun-control group March for Our Lives, said in a statement. 'Today, they're saying our lives matter less than their politics.' The White House did not respond to questions about whether the policy change weakened safety measures around gun sales.
Wall Street Journal
3 days ago
- General
- Wall Street Journal
Four Justices for AR-15s . . . Next Time
Is the AR-15 rifle protected by the Second Amendment? The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals last year said no in a doubtful opinion written by the redoubtable conservative Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III. On Monday the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of that ruling, while sending an unmistakable message to Second Amendment advocates: Ask again later. The oddity is that it takes four Justices to accept a case, and four chose to go on record here. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch stated that they would have heard the Fourth Circuit appeal, Snope v. Brown. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a longer dissent from the denial. 'The State of Maryland prohibits ownership of AR-15s, the most popular civilian rifle in America,' he begins. Then he casts shade on the Fourth Circuit's 'surprising conclusion' that 'AR-15s are not 'arms' protected by the Second Amendment.' That's three Justices. The fourth is Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who issued a 'statement' tipping his hand. AR-15s are legal in 41 states, he says, and Americans own 20 million to 30 million of them. The Snope petitioners therefore 'have a strong argument that AR-15s are in 'common use' by law-abiding citizens and therefore are protected by the Second Amendment.' He calls the Fourth Circuit's contrary ruling 'questionable.'
Washington Post
4 days ago
- General
- Washington Post
Supreme Court leaves in place Maryland's ban on assault-style rifles
The Supreme Court declined to take up a pair of gun-rights cases Monday, leaving in place Maryland's ban on semiautomatic military-style rifles and Rhode Island's restrictions on large-capacity magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The court's action drew dissents from three conservatives, showing the Supreme Court still divided on how to handle Second Amendment cases after the justices expanded gun rights in a 2022 landmark decision.
New York Times
4 days ago
- General
- New York Times
Supreme Court Turns Down Challenge to Ban on Semiautomatic Rifles
The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would not hear a major Second Amendment challenge to a Maryland law banning semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15. As is the court's practice, its brief order gave no reasons. The move, over the objections of three conservative justices, let the ban stand and reflected the court's intermittent engagement with gun rights. It has issued only three significant Second Amendment decisions since recognizing an individual right to own guns in 2008. The Maryland law was enacted in 2013 in response to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut the previous year. It banned many semiautomatic rifles and imposed a 10-round limit on gun magazines. In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said the court should have considered the question, which the justices have repeatedly declined to resolve. 'I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America,' he wrote. 'That question is of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR-15 owners throughout the country. We have avoided deciding it for a full decade.' He added that the court's commitment to the Second Amendment was inadequate. 'I doubt we would sit idly by if lower courts were to so subvert our precedents involving any other constitutional right,' he wrote. 'Until we are vigilant in enforcing it, the right to bear arms will remain 'a second-class right.'' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Reuters
4 days ago
- General
- Reuters
US Supreme Court won't review assault weapon, high-capacity magazine bans
June 2 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a challenge to the legality of state restrictions on assault-style rifles and large-capacity ammunition magazines, passing up cases that offered the justices a chance to further expand gun rights. The justices turned away two appeals after lower courts upheld a ban in Maryland on powerful semi-automatic rifles such as AR-15s and one in Rhode Island restricting the possession of ammunition feeding devices holding more than 10 rounds. The lower courts rejected arguments that the measures violate the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment right to "keep and bear arms." In a nation bitterly divided over how to address firearms violence including numerous mass shootings, the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, often has taken an expansive view of the Second Amendment. The court broadened gun rights in landmark rulings in 2008, 2010 and in a 2022 case that made it harder to defend gun restrictions under the Second Amendment, requiring them to be "consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." The challengers now before the Supreme Court contended that states and courts are flouting precedents that make clear that the Second Amendment protects weapons that are in "common use." Maryland in 2013 enacted its ban on military-style "assault weapons" such as the semiautomatic AR-15 and AK-47 after a shooter used such a firearm in the 2012 mass killing of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The law carries a penalty of up to three years in prison. A Maryland resident who is seeking to purchase one of the banned guns, as well as three gun rights organizations including the Firearms Policy Coalition, sued in 2020, claiming the ban violates the Second Amendment. The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2024 rejected the challenge because it said assault weapons "are military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense." As such, the "excessively dangerous" firearms are not protected by the Second Amendment, the 4th Circuit decided. The 4th Circuit said it refused "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." The plaintiffs told the Supreme Court that the term "assault weapon" is a political term that is designed to exploit public confusion over machine guns and semi-automatic firearms. The banned weapons, they said, are "identical to any other semiautomatic firearm - arms that are exceedingly common and fully protected by the Second Amendment." Rhode Island's law, passed in 2022 as a response to mass shootings, bars most "large-capacity feeding" devices such as a magazine or drum that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The state calls it a "mild restriction on a particularly dangerous weapons accessory" and that in mass shooting situations, "any pause in fire, such as the pause to switch magazines, allows for precious seconds in which to escape or take defensive action." The law applied retroactively, meaning residents had to surrender or alter any banned magazine that they owned, and carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. Four gun owners and a registered firearms dealer sued, claiming the ban violated their Second Amendment rights, and that having to forfeit the magazines they owned violated the Constitution's prohibition on the government taking property without compensation. In 2024 the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the claims and refused to block the law, noting that the weapons have been deployed in mass shootings for a reason: "Semiautomatic firearms fitted with (large capacity magazines) are highly effective weapons of mass slaughter." Magazine capacity "directly corresponds to lethality," the 1st Circuit said. The Rhode Island plaintiffs told the Supreme Court that instead of abiding by the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling, the state's law "can only be understood as protest legislation imposing more restrictive bans on long-common arms." The Supreme Court has been buffeted in recent years by challenges to gun restrictions. It is due to rule by the end of June on the legality of a 2022 regulation issued by Democratic former President Joe Biden's administration cracking down on "ghost guns," largely untraceable firearms whose use has proliferated in crimes nationwide. The justices signaled approval of that ban during arguments in the case in October. The court in June 2024 upheld a federal law that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to have guns. They also struck down a federal ban on "bump stock" devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns, although that case was not centered on the Second Amendment.
