The Supreme Court decided not to hear arguments involving two Second Amendment challenges.
According to CNN, the one appeal included Maryland’s ban on semi-automatic weapons such as AR- and AK-style rifles. The law was enacted after the deadly 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. It was being challenged by David Snope, a state resident who wanted to purchase said rifles for self-defense and other purposes.
The Supreme Court also will not hear a challenge to Rhode Island’s ban on high-capacity gun magazines.
The court did not give an explanation in declining to hear the cases. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, all conservatives, dissented.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh said other cases with AR-style rifles are pending in lower courts.
“This court should and presumably will address the AR–15 issue soon,” Kavanaugh said.
The Rhode Island law forbids the ownership of “large-capacity feeding devices or magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition,” per the outset. Owners can 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.”
In the Maryland case, the automatic rifles at issue are “dangerous and unusual weapons” and therefore are not protected by the Second Amendment.
The majority also said there were “historical analogues to the Maryland statute that were adopted by state legislatures across the country in the 19th and 20th century,” CNN reported.
“It is difficult to see how Maryland’s categorical prohibition on AR–15s passes muster under this framework,” wrote Thomas, the sole justice in dissent.
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