WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on June 2 preserved Maryland’s ban on assault-style weapons and Rhode Island’s ban on high-capacity magazines, declining for now to decide if they meet the high court’s controversial bar for gun restrictions.
While that’s a victory for gun control advocates − and it came over the objections of several conservative justices − the issue could come back to the high court.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that challenges to other bans on assault-style weapons are being considered in lower courts and, “in my view, this Court should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon.”
Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas said they would have taken up now both Maryland’s ban on assault-style weapons and Rhode Island’s ban on high-capacity magazines.
“I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America,” Thomas wrote in his dissent. “That question is of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR-15 owners throughout the country.”
Kavanaugh likewise wrote that gun rights advocates have a strong case that because AF-15s are legal in most states, they can be considered to be in “common use” by law-abiding citizens so should be allowed under the court’s past interpretations of the Constitution.
To not violate the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court has said, a restriction must be grounded in historic tradition. Lower courts have been struggling to apply this standard.
Gun rights advocates challenging Maryland’s ban said it doesn’t pass that test because AR-15s are one of the nation’s most popular weapons, proof that there’s a history of allowing them.
Maryland argues the ban is constitutional because the nation has long regulated exceptionally dangerous weapons.
But even some of the lower court judges who agreed the ban doesn’t violate the Second Amendment said they need more guidance from the Supreme Court.
Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the high court’s 2022 ruling “has proven to be a labyrinth for lower courts, including our own, with only the one-dimensional history-and-tradition test as a compass.”
Tasked with “shifting through the sands of time,” Diaz wrote in a concurring opinion, lower courts “are asking for help.”
The Supreme Court’s most recent ruling on the Second Amendment – a 2024 decision upholding a gun control law intended to protect victims of domestic violence – offered little clarity, he said.
In that ruling, the Supreme Court said lower courts were misunderstanding their methodology. A gun regulation must have only a “historical analogue” and not a “historical twin” to be upheld, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.
His opinion did not say how that test should be applied to regulations like Maryland’s or Rhode Island’s.
Maryland banned AR-15s after Sandy Hook shooting
Maryland passed its ban after the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, one of the deadliest school shootings in the nation’s history. The law prohibits dozens of firearms including the AK-47s and certain AR-15s.
Nine other states, the District of Columbia, and various cities have also restricted assault weapons.
The appeals court upheld Maryland’s ban in 2017. But after the Supreme Court set the historical tradition test in its 2022 decision known as Bruen, the justices directed the appeals court to reconsider its ruling.
Writing for the majority, 4th U.S. Circuit Court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, said the ban “fits comfortably within our nation’s tradition of firearms regulation.”
“Our nation has a strong tradition of regulating excessively dangerous weapons once it becomes clear that they are exacting an inordinate toll on public safety and societal wellbeing,” he wrote.
Gun rights groups said that if Maryland is allowed to ban “the most popular rifle in the country,” then no firearm will be protected from regulation except handguns that were at the center of the court’s 2008 decision expanding gun rights.
In that decision, known as Heller, the court said those rights do have limits – which are guided by the nation’s tradition of banning “dangerous and unusual weapons.”
While Maryland focuses on the “dangerous” aspect of AR-15s, gun rights advocates say the weapon’s popularity shows AR-15s are not “unusual.”
Rhode Island made it a felony to have a large-capacity magazine
Rhode Island, in 2022, made it a felony to have a firearm magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
Four gun owners and a gun store challenged the ban, arguing the state is thumbing its nose at the court’s 2022 decision.
A federal district judge declined to put the ban on hold, saying the challenge was unlikely to succeed.
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. A three-judge panel wrote that the ban doesn’t burden the right to self-defense because a large-capacity magazines are not necessary outside “Hollywood-inspired scenarios in which a homeowner would need to fend off a platoon of well-armed assailants without having to swap out magazines.”
The court also said the ban is consistent with past restrictions on particularly dangerous weapons used mostly for crime and mass violence such as sawed-off shotguns, machine guns and Bowie knives.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha told the Supreme Court it did not need to get involved at this stage as the record is still being developed while the challenge continues.
The ban, Neronha wrote in a filing, “imposes a relatively mild restriction on a particularly dangerous weapon accessory.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court won’t review assault weapons bans in several states
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