US top court rejects challenge to assault weapon ban

The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to review a challenge to local gun restrictions in a Chicago suburb, leaving in place a ban on assault weapons in Highland Park, Ill.

An appeal seeking to challenge a law banning semi-automatic assault weapons and large-capcity magazines in Highland Park, Chicago was rejected Monday by the Supreme Court.

The Court denied a petition backed by the Illinois State Rifle Association that sought a review of the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in Highland Park, Illinois. The city’s regulations were upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, which deemed such gun bans permissible under the Second Amendment.

The Illinois rifle group and Friedman urged the Supreme Court to address what they called “the lower courts’ massive resistance to Heller and their refusal to treat Second Amendment rights as deserving respect equal to other constitutional rights”.

The high court has considered taking on the case for two months, and a delay in deciding whether to take it on seems to be because Justice Clarence Thomas was finishing his opinion. “Mass shootings are rare, but they are highly salient, and people tend to overestimate the likelihood of salient events”, the appeals court said.

Two years later, in the case McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court held that the earlier ruling applied to the states.

The Supreme Court in 2008 established a constitutional right to have a gun. Both justices said if they were given a chance to rule on the case, they would overturn the ban on semi-automatic weapons. But he appears to have only one other vote for his NRA-sponsored theory-and until he gets more, the Second Amendment will continue to allow for bans on the kind of weapons that enable mass shootings. Such weapons had been used in several mass shootings across the country, including the killings of children and staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and 12 people at a Colorado movie theater.

The challengers were represented by Cooper Kirk, a high-powered conservative D.C. law firm led by legal heavyweights Charles Cooper and David Thompson, who have been instrumental in Second Amendment cases nationwide.

“If Kansas were to have an assault weapons ban, it (the Supreme Court decision) would still only be just a persuasive argument for any court that would have jurisdiction”, Jackson said.

They also noted that seven states, including California, Connecticut and NY, have similar laws. The law prohibits the sale, purchase and possession of semi-automatic firearms with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

“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.

Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook was criticized for writing at the time that assault weapons bans are valid as long as they “make the public feel safer”. A divided three-judge panel for the appeals court upheld the ordinance in an April ruling.