Topline
The Supreme Court ruled Monday to let two state gun control laws remain in place, as the 6-3 conservative court declined to take up challenges to Maryland’s assault weapons ban and Rhode Island’s ban on high-capacity magazines.
Gun control supporters protest outside the US Supreme Court on December 2, 2019.
Justices declined to take up two gases that could have expanded gun rights, including Maryland’s ban on all “assault weapons”—including popular semiautomatic weapons like the AR-15—and Rhode Island’s ban on gun owners possessing magazines that contain more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
The decisions mean that both laws will stay in place, but it’s still possible the court could decide to take up challenges to those laws or other similar state gun control laws in the future.
Justices ruled 6-3 against taking up both cases, with the court noting that Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch would have taken up both cases.
While the court’s majority didn’t explain their decisions to reject the cases, Thomas issued a dissent opposing the court’s decision not to take up Maryland’s assault weapons ban, calling the appeals court’s decision to uphold the ban “dubious” and saying he “cannot see how AR-15s fall outside the Second Amendment’s protections.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh also issued an opinion in the case, saying that while he respects the court’s decision not to weigh in on Maryland’s assault weapons ban, he thought the appeals court’s ruling was “questionable” and wrote that the court’s decision not to take it up “does not mean that the Court agrees with a lower-court decision or that the issue is not worthy of review.”
Kavanaugh predicted Monday the court will soon consider the question of whether assault weapons bans are unconstitutional, even though they decided not to take up the Maryland case. “Additional petitions ... 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,” the justice wrote.
“I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America,” Thomas wrote in his dissent against the court rejecting the Maryland case, arguing the question of whether the firearms are legal “is of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR–15 owners throughout the country.” “Until we are vigilant in enforcing it, the right to bear arms will remain ‘a second-class right,’” the justice claimed.
This story is breaking and will be updated.