High court rejects challenge to local assault weapons ban

The Supreme Court has not taken up a major gun case since 2010.

“Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons”, he argued. Gun rights advocates say that they laws violate enumerated second amendment rights.

The Seventh Circuit court ruled that the ban is a reasonable restriction to prevent or limit mass shootings.

It was mere coincidence that, just days after that incident, the Justices would again refuse to get involved.

“Highland Park’s ban includes some of the most popular firearms in the nation”, David H. Thompson, a lawyer for the challengers, wrote in briefs. Similar bans exist in California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii and CT.

“Like any right, the Second Amendment is necessarily limited by the public’s right to live – a right not to be shot”.

The case is Friedman v. Highland, 15-133. The courts have given supporters of the Second Amendment landmark victories on the issue of gun rights since the 2008 Heller case, which confirmed an American citizen’s right to own firearms. That ruling noted a statement in the Heller decision that said legislatures retained the ability to prohibit “dangerous and unusual” weapons, and Judge Frank Easterbrook said the guns Highland Park banned qualified. Once the industry had peddled their product to enough gun owners, the weapons themselves would be legally untouchable. More than five million are manufactured each year, and they are said to out-sell handguns and are about equal in sales to shotguns. The week before that, a gunman at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado used an assault weapon to kill three people. In June, the court declined to review a San Francisco ordinance that requires residents to lock up their handguns or disable them at home.

At least four of the nine justices must agree to review a case.

Advocates of stronger gun regulations, particularly in IL, have had a rough time in the courts in recent years.

“Let’s wait and see if certain measures of gun control pass. Let’s wait and see if states respond by passing even stricter measures of gun control”.

The court rejected the appeal Tuesday with two justices-Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia-saying they would have granted the case “because noncompliance with our Second Amendment precedents warrants this court’s attention as much as any of our precedents”. Data needs to take its proper place in this debate.

But the 7-2 decision not to hear the case indicates Thomas and Scalia don’t have a firm majority for that position, Rich said.

The federal appeals court in Chicago ruled that local governments have leeway in deciding how to regulate firearms. “It’s important to remember that the Supreme Court has regularly maintained that a denial is not an affirmation of a lower court’s ruling”. “In the wake of the San Bernardino shootings, “there is a need and an opportunity” for other communities to enact similar prohibitions”, said Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering after the Court action. Government tests of the rifles concluded that modification had failed.