Supreme Court Turns Down Challenge to ‘Assault Weapon,’ Magazine Ban Cases
Justice Brett Kavanaugh is a coward.
The Supreme Court won’t hear the challenge to Maryland’s “assault weapon” and magazine case.
Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas would have granted the petition for a writ of certiorari for both cases.
- David Snope, et al. v. Anthony Brown challenged Maryland’s “assault weapon” ban.
- Ocean State Tactical, et al. v. Rhode Island challenged Rhode Island’s “large capacity” magazine ban.
The Snope case started in 2021 as Bianchi v. Frost. I’m not kidding.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh released a statement “respecting the denial of certiorari (emphasis mine):”
In District of Columbia v. Heller, this Court ruled that the Second Amendment must be interpreted in light of constitutional text, history, and tradition. 554 U. S. 570, 576–628 (2008). The Court further determined that the Second Amendment protects those weapons that are in “common use” by law-abiding citizens. Id., at 624, 627. Because handguns are in common use by law-abiding citizens, the Court held that the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns violated the Second Amendment. Id., at 628–629. The Court’s later Second Amendment decisions in Bruen and Rahimi did not disturb the historically based “common use” test with respect to the possession of particular weapons. See New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U. S. 1, 47 (2022); see also United States v. Rahimi, 602 U. S. 680, 735–736 (2024) (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring); post, at 1–6 (THOMAS, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari).
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 under Heller. See Heller v. District of Columbia, 670 F. 3d 1244, 1286–1288 (CADC 2011) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting). If so, then the Fourth Circuit would have erred by holding that Maryland’s ban on AR–15s complies with the Second Amendment.
Under this Court’s Second Amendment precedents, moreover, it can be analytically difficult to distinguish the AR–15s at issue here from the handguns at issue in Heller. AR–15s are semi-automatic, but so too are most handguns. (Semi-automatic handguns and rifles are distinct from automatic firearms such as the M–16 automatic rifle used by the military.) Law-abiding citizens use both AR–15s and handguns for a variety of lawful purposes, including selfdefense in the home. For their part, criminals use both AR–15s and handguns, as well as a variety of other lawful weapons and products, in unlawful ways that threaten public safety. But handguns can be more easily carried and concealed than rifles, and handguns—not rifles—are used in the vast majority of murders and other violent crimes that individuals commit with guns in America.
In short, under this Court’s precedents, the Fourth Circuit’s decision is questionable. Although the Court today denies certiorari, a denial of certiorari does not mean that the Court agrees with a lower-court decision or that the issue is not worthy of review. The AR–15 issue was recently decided by the First Circuit and is currently being considered by several other Courts of Appeals. See Capen v. Campbell, 134 F. 4th 660 (CA1 2025); see also, e.g., National Assn. for Gun Rights v. Lamont, 685 F. Supp. 3d 63 (Conn. 2023), appeal pending, No. 23–1162 (CA2); Association of N. J. Rifle & Pistol Clubs, Inc. v. Platkin, 742 F. Supp. 3d 421 (NJ 2024), appeal pending, No. 24–2415 (CA3); Viramontes v. County of Cook, No. 1:21–cv–4595 (ND Ill., Mar. 1, 2024), appeal pending, No. 24–1437 (CA7); Miller v. Bonta, 699 F. Supp. 3d 956 (SD Cal. 2023), appeal pending, No. 23–2979 (CA9). Opinions from other Courts of Appeals should assist this Court’s ultimate decisionmaking on the AR–15 issue. Additional petitions for certiorari 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.
Excuse me? Your job is literally to interpret the Constitution. Literally.
What a cop out.
Basically: “We don’t want to touch a controversial topic right now even though we know the Fourth Circuit had crap justifications and the ban obvs violates the Second Amendment. Besides there are more cases coming up.”
SCOTUS needs four votes to hear a case. Kavanaugh is a coward.
Thomas clearly interprets the Constitution for Kavanaugh (emphasis mine):
To start, AR–15s are clearly “Arms” under the Second Amendment’s plain text. In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570 (2008), we held that the term “Arms” in this context covers all “‘[w]eapons of offence, or armour of defence.’” Id., at 581; see also ibid. (explaining that “Arms” include “‘any thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another’”). Thus, “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” Id., at 582; accord, United States v. Rahimi, 602 U. S. 680, 691 (2024); Bruen, 597 U. S., at 28; Caetano v. Massachusetts, 577 U. S. 411 (2016) (per curiam). AR–15s fall squarely within this category.
Because AR–15s are “Arms,” the burden shifts to Maryland to show that banning AR–15s is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Bruen, 597 U. S., at 17. But, I am not aware of any “historical regulation” that could serve as “a proper analogue” to Maryland’s ban. Id., at 28–29.
Thomas then slams his colleagues for the delay:
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. We have avoided deciding it for a full decade. See Harrel, 603 U. S. ___; Friedman, 577 U. S. 1039. And, further percolation is of little value when lower courts in the jurisdictions that ban AR–15s appear bent on distorting this Court’s Second Amendment precedents. See Harrel, 603 U. S., at ___ (opinion of THOMAS, J.) (slip op., at 2) (discussing the Seventh Circuit’s parallel conclusion that AR–15s do “not even fall within the scope of the Arms referred to by the Second Amendment”). I doubt we would sit idly by if lower courts were to so subvert our precedents involving any other constitutional right. Until we are vigilant in enforcing it, the right to bear arms will remain “a second-class right.” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 780 (2010) (plurality opinion).
Thomas invoked Bondi v. VanDerStok, where SCOTUS upheld an ATF regulation that places objects that “may readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted to” a firearm under the definition of a firearm.
In Thomas’s dissent in Bondi, he quoted a line from the case: “every single AR-15 can be converted to a machinegun using flimsy pieces of metal-including coat hangers.”
Therefore, the ATF could declare AR-15s as machine guns “prohibited under federal law.”
“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,” Thomas added.
History of the Snope case
Here’s the history of the case.
In 2022, the case “had been fully briefed and decided on the merits before the Bruen decision was handed down later that year.
But after Bruen, the judgment was vacated and sent back to the Fourth Circuit.
In August 2024, the Fourth Circuit upheld the ban:
For these reasons, 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 so holding, we offer no view on how a state should regulate firearms. Nor do we do anything to impose Maryland’s regulations upon other states. We do hold, however, that Maryland was well within its constitutional prerogative to legislate as it did. We therefore reject the challenges of appellants and affirm the judgment of the district court.
Can you be more dramatic?! My goodness, it takes a lot of effort to misinterpret the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights.
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Comments
The Supreme Court avoids 2nd Amendment cases like the plague.
The headline –
“Supreme Court Turns Down Challenge to ‘Assault Weapon,’ Magazine Ban Cases
Justice Brett Kavanaugh is a coward.”
its possible that kavanaugh is not the coward
Very possible that Barret and roberts will side with the 3 leftists and thus a strategic decision to avoid a further errosion of 2A
I can see that… thank you.
They are absolutely cowards. (Not Thomas, but often the other 6 are.)
You mean the ones appointed by Trump? Yes. Only Thomas and Alito are consistently on our side, You know, the Justices appointed by the Bushes. The RINO, GOPe, Neocons, globalist Presidents, etc, G_d help us if Trump gets to appoint any more Justices to the Supreme Court.
“Our side?”
You are not, and NEVER have been, on OUR side.
Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump / 🎶
Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump /
Glorious Truuuuuummp…. Wonderful Truuuump…
Then clearly, the correct answer is to indicate that as “Arms”, Machine Guns are protected under the constitution and cannot be banned. Thus mooting the point of whether or not the semiautomatic AR-15 counts as one due to the potential for modification.
As Justice Thomas memorably and aptly stated in his dissent to SCOTUS’s denial of certiorari in Peruta v. California, in 2017:
“For those of us who work in marbled halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous. But the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense. I do not think we should stand by idly while a state denies its citizens that right, particularly when their very lives may depend on it.”
Thomas also observed that California’s scheme in that case (a requirement that residents prove to their county sheriff that they have “good cause” to carry a firearm, in order to receive a concealed carry permit) brazenly treats the Second Amendment “as a disfavored right.”
Would being Jewish count as a “good cause” these days?
Not to Dhimmi-crats. They want Jews to be easy targets for genocidal Islamofascists and Muslim terrorists/supremacists.
It was up to the sheriff.
Thankfully that test is now completely banned. No state can require an applicant to have “good cause”. So they’ve substituted a test for whether the applicant is a “suitable person”. Rather than having the sheriff decide how badly you need to be able to defend yourself, we’ll have him consider whether you’re the kind of person whose safety matters.
SSDD…
Back in Massachusetts, we had a battered wife whose application for a pistol permit was twice refused for ‘lack of need” (“good cause”).
After her ex-husband put her in the hospital, her subsequent application was rejected because “she had a history of violence: (“suitable person”).
Heads they win.
Exactly. Her safety doesn’t matter.
“…and the ban obvs violates the Second Amendment…
Is obvs a legal term of some sort? I don’t understand. Thank you.
I believe it’s a slang contraction for “Obviously”
Why slang on a website not directed at teens?
I was going to respond with a “Man Shrugging” emoji, for the humor of it, but apparently the comment field won’t accept them as input.
¯|_(ツ)_/¯
(old school emoji)
I’m totes fine with that… /ducking
Gun ownership is a civil right like any other enumerated civil right. And yet, too many on this ‘conservative’ Court are perfectly content to watch states trample on civil rights for reasons known only to them. If a state decided that it was no longer going to allow naturalized citizens to vote, would Kavanaugh think that civil rights violation was good enough to hear NOW, or would he wait until a better case came along?
Someone on Twitter just pointed out that this same Court ruled several weeks ago that the ‘due process’ rights of criminal illegal aliens had to be carefully protected including establishing time-limits for District Court to hear habeas challenges to their detainment. And yet, Kavanaugh is telling US CITIZENS whose rights are being trampled by MD to sit tight until he sees a better case over the next several years. It’s really infuriating. We’re not all fortunate enough to have a platoon of heavily armed US Marshals stationed at our homes like Kavanaugh and the rest of them do.
Self-defense and the right to survive a criminal assault are human rights, not civil rights. These rights presume an additional right, the right to the tools necessary to defend one’s life, making the right to arms a human right as well.
Civil rights (like voting and the right to a jury trial) depend on the existence of a government to facilitate the right’s existence in some way, while others manifest as rules for government conduct with regard to its interactions with citizens.
Human rights are those rights that can be exercised in the absence of any government. (If you were stranded on the proverbial desert island and a box containing a WWII Japanese machine gun washed up on shore, wouldn’t you be able to possess it? Would its possession be a crime? Could you get a permit for it? No? Then what else is left but that your possession of the gun is an exercise of right? It’s property, yes? Do you not have a right to accumulate property?)
The founders provided for civil rights in the Constitution. They provided for human rights by not giving the government authority to legislate against them. Even the 2nd Amendment is meant to be a guarantee that Congress has no authority to legislate against the right to arms (please see the preamble to the Bill of Rights where this is made clear).
The civil rights problem here isn’t the gun control legislation per se but the fact that the state (meaning both State and federal governments) is supposed to be prohibited (by our constitutions) from taking our any of our rights via legislation. The only proper way to divest a person of rights is via a penalty/punishment for having been convicted of a crime. Anything citizens were able to do in the past that wasn’t a crime or didn’t require a permit/license must have been done by right. This includes the ownership of arms such as those used by the military and their carry in public and use in self-defense. The state had no authority to curtail any of our rights and our rights should be self-evident as having already been exercised in the past.
Kavanaugh’s punting the issue makes no sense. He explicitly states that the petitioners “have a strong argument” and that additional requests for certiorari will come to the Court, in the future.
Why delay? To what end?
Kavanaugh’s statement shows he unquestionably believes the AWB is unconstitutional and CTA4 screwed up.
So why would he not cast the requisite fourth vote for cert?
Only reason I can see is that he perceives that Roberts and ACB have gone wobbly, and Kavanaugh is not sure they could get to five and keep Bruen from being overruled. (Similar dynamic occurred when Kennedy was on the court, and neither side could be sure he’d vote with them to get to five.)
Reading between the lines, I think Kavanaugh wants more time to be sure he can get one or both of them on side before granting cert.
But it still sucks, and will just encourage more deliberate ignoring of Bruen in blue circuits.
He’s waiting for a circuit split. So far every circuit that has considered the question has got it wrong. He wants at least one circuit to get it right, and then it will be ripe for SCOTUS.
He is a coward on all things since Roe
He should just step down
Along with Roberts and Amy
I think I dislike Amy most of all
Cool. No more 1A cases from ‘protesters’ then until SCOTUS acts to solidify and support the 2A Rights decision in Heller, Rahimi and Bruen. No more giving a crap about the 1A rights of anti USA groups, pro terrorist groups or anyone else ‘bad mouthing the USA’ until the 2A is considered just as important by everyone else. I don’t wanna hear ‘…but the 1A in regard to protests’ I don’t wanna hear ‘…but due process in regard to deportations’ of illegal immigrants.
I understand the sentiment, but it’s all very well until it’s your rights that are being trampled. Suddenly you will want the courts to stand up for you, even if those same courts are inexplicably not standing up for that other fellow.
Stupid nondecision. As most of us know assault weapons are really non existent. They are just semi-automatic weapons dressed up to look especially wicked. As such they could save the progressive states a lot of money and xanax by finally settling the question (covered by 2nd amendment).
Again, “assault rifles” do exist and are very particularly defined. And, after decades of gun-folk slapping them senseless on that, they made up the phrase “assault weapons” to keep the scare on people, and specifically with no set definition. Basically “Oh, they’re the scary looking ones.”
Which I’ve always thought hilarious, because ANY of the anti-gunners would think a .22LR derringer was scary looking if pointed at them. You don’t really need the “assault weapon” moniker to scare those people.
The assault rifle/weapon of war argument is actually an argument in favor of the right to own such weapons. The word “arms,” as used in the 2nd Amendment, means “weapons of the individual soldier” (as opposed to crew-served weapons, such as cannons, which were referred to as “ordnance”).
One of the early challenges to the NFA concerned short-barreled shotguns. It was the government’s position that SBSs weren’t useful to a militia and were therefore not protected. (This alone should clue us – the government at one time argued the amendment only protected such arms that would be useful to a militia, i.e. “weapons of war.”) The defendant was going to demonstrate that SBSs were used in WWI, in which they were called “trench sweepers.” Such evidence would have destroyed the government’s position, as it would have made it clear that SBSs were, in fact, militarily useful. Unfortunately the defendant died before the case could be heard and short barreled shotguns have ever since been considered “NFA items.”
My point here is that we should be using the “weapons of war” argument because even the opposition agrees that they are, and the government has already argued that this status causes the AR and other “assault rifles” to fall into the category of “militarily useful” and therefore protected by the 2nd Amendment.
Once militarily useful arms are established as the very class of arms protected by the 2nd Amendment, nearly all firearms would be protected* because nearly all types have been used in war at one time or another.
*But I don’t believe this is the correct way to go. The 2nd Amendment is not just a declaration of rights, it is also a promise/guarantee that government has no authority to make such laws in the first place. The Bill of Rights was meant to assure certain States that the absence (in the Constitution) of any enumerated authority to the federal government really did mean that it didn’t have any unenumerated power to legislate over forbidden subject matter. It’s not just about our rights, it’s also about the limits of government power. We don’t have to prove a right to an arm, we only need demonstrate that something is an arm to establish Congress has no power to regulate it.
I’m still trying to understand two things::
1) What exactly *is* an “assault weapon”?
2) Which part of “shall not be infringed” is not clear?
1. The definition is arbitrary, and varies from state to state.
2. The amendment’s language makes it clear that the RKBA must not be infringed. But it does not make it clear what exactly the right includes, and what is an infringement. It’s almost universally agreed that not all restrictions on weapons do infringe the RKBA; so the courts need to rule on which ones do.
It’s the same with the first amendment. The freedom of speech may not be abridged; but what exactly does that freedom consist of, and what kinds of laws abridge it. For instance properly written defamation laws don’t abridge it. Nor do the laws against threats and incitement, provided that they stay within the strict definitions of those terms as laid down in such decisions as Brandenburg and Watts.
Likewise there are likely to be restrictions on weapons that don’t infringe the RKBA, and these exceptions must be identified by the courts. Instead the courts have spent most of a century dancing around the issue and refusing to definitively identify what are the exceptions and where the general rule applies, that almost all weapons restrictions do infringe the right.
Hold on a second, because this statement scares me.
“…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
I can’t find where it says “common use by law abiding citizens.” What if somebody invents a new type of weapon?
Let’s say, for example, that somebody invents a hand-held weapon that can shoot plasma. Such new type of gun is not in “common use” because it has just been invented. Should we assume that under Heller, the government has the right to forbid its use by citizens?
Can the government ban any new kind of weaponry just because nobody has used it before? That makes absolutely no sense to me.
Just as importantly, can it ban old weapons that “no one” uses anymore?
Can it ban sword canes because nobody carries swords anymore? How about a flintlock pistol? Or… just to scare Biden, how about a cannon?
Nope. These cases set the floor not the ceiling on what is allowable. Not anymore than the 1A only apples to town newspapers, pamphlets or books produced with 18th century printing press, hand written letters and the spoken but not amplified or broadcast word.
If X type of arm(s) and accoutrements were allowed then they are allowed now and this carries forward with technological development for their modern counterparts. At Founding ordinary citizens possessed the same sorts of arms an Infantry Battalion or small Navel vessel would possess/mount. The same should hold today for their modern technological successors. So basically anything up to 120 mm mortars, weapons capable drones, .50 cal M2, SAW and call it 3in naval guns or whatever the size of the main gun on the largest Coast Guard vessels are.
As far as I know, the largest Coast Guard vessel is the Legend-class, which mounts a single 57mm main gun and one 20mm anti-aircraft gun. 57mm = 2.24″.
Thanks, I wasn’t sure the size and didn’t take time to look it up. All.without registration and limitations on ammo. Might have to increase up to a Destroyer…kinda pointless to issue letters of marque to privateers if they don’t have adequate arms and training.
Legality of sword canes
https://lawshun.com/article/are-cane-swords-illegal-under-federal-usa-law
In a nutshell their legality is state specific.
This sort of thing has already happened.
From six days ago…
When “We the People” are disarmed… what army will protect the Constitution? SCOTUS… how many armies do you have to prevent tyranny? Roberts, Coney Island Barret and Kav-in-now…. what winners.
….. and 2 out of 3 of them were appointed by guess who?
Personally, I think the Supreme Court should be required to take all cases involving un-constitutional laws passed by the states or the federal government. Since a bunch of the states can’t seem to read and understand the Constitution, they should be set straight EVERY TIME the issue comes up.
Then the Executive branch should move in and take over the government since the state is obviously in violation of Article IV, Section 4:
We need a constitutional amendment that creates the presumption that all laws are unconstitutional, and that upon the first attempt to enforce a law the burden of proof would be upon the government to demonstrate that Congress did, indeed, have the authority to make the legislation upon which the statute is based. This judgment would be reserved to the jury sitting on the case of the law’s first (attempted) application, and the jury’s determination that a law is unconstitutional would be unreviewable. (If the jury doesn’t reject the law, it could still be subsequently reviewed by the courts.)
There isn’t supposed to be a burden of proof on the defense, but requiring a defense to make successful constitutional arguments does exactly that. This suggested process would put the burden of making a successful constitutional argument where it belongs, on the government.
Making unconstitutional laws does not put a state in breach of the Republican Guarantee clause.
A republican form of government, by definition, refers to the existence of the right institutions, such as an elected legislature and a separate executive, rather than to what those institutions do. A republic that violates every one of the bill of rights is still a republic.
And the “Supreme” Court takes another giant step towards irrelevancy…
its not about how much ammo/weapons you possess
its about the amount of your own blood you are willing to unpossess
Somebody explain to me why 1/3 of the co-equal branches of this government romps right over the other two, and never gets checked.
The only remedy for the supreme court is impeachment and it’s very hard to get a conviction.
Huh? This post is complaining about the courts NOT interfering, and allowing the other two branches to have their way a little longer, and here you come complaining that they interfere too often?! So you agree with the anti-gun lobby that the courts should not strike these unconstitutional laws down?!
The constitution says that the judicial power is vested entirely in the federal courts. All of them, not just the supreme court. And the judicial power is the power to say what the law is. No other branch gets any say in that. In this case the judicial branch has been saying, incorrectly, that the other two branches are complying with the law. Sooner or later, though, it will be forced to find that they are not, and to “romp over them”, at which point you will presumably complain. But so far it has not, so you should be happy.
Easy to see that 5 out of the 9 SCOTUS are OK with letting government have the upper hand over the citizens… We the People. A lot can be done to assure “domestic tranquility” just like in all totalitarian societies. Note that all of the states that have bans are left and edging toward if not already one party “totalitarian” rule. 2A is part of the ultimate check and balance yet SCOTUS may think that a kind heart and pure thoughts will rule the day. How many armies does SCOTUS have… only one…We the People. If they blink and when they are ignored (see Biden)… they should be held in the same regard as those traitors of the past. No harm should befall them… just isolation and exclusion .. people without a country forever detached from country and friend.