Justices reject challenge to assault weapons ban

Rich said it’s hard to draw many conclusions from cases the Supreme Court declines to hear, But the indication in the Highland Park case would be that the justices are continuing to duck having to make a decision outlining the exact boundaries of the Second Amendment, the part of the Bill of Rights that speaks to the right to keep and bear arms, he said. Dissenting Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia said they would have heard the case.

The court’s decision to allow the Highland Park ordinance to stand comes in the aftermath of several mass shootings that involving assault-style weapons, most recently the attack in San Bernardino, Calif.

“The millions of Americans who own so-called “assault weapons” use them for the same lawful purposes as any other type of firearm: hunting, recreational shooting, and self-defense”, he wrote, adding that the firearms are “almost never used for crime” because criminals “far prefer” ordinary handguns that are easier to carry and hide. But seven states – Maryland, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey and NY – have similar bans, and all of the prohibitions remain in place.

It’s a reversal from two previous cases in which the court struck down local gun control ordinances in Chicago and Washington, D.C., that barred citizens from keeping a handgun at home for self-defense.

For context, the second amendment of the Constitution guarantees all citizens the right to bear arms, but there is a longstanding legal debate over the scope of the second amendment and reasonable limits to gun ownership (such as over age of 18, barring felons from gun ownership, etc).

Justice Thomas, writing for himself and Justice Scalia in dissent, said that there is nothing unusual about the guns banned by the Highland Park ordinance; calling them assault weapons, he said, is nothing more than “anti-gun propaganda”.

The justices gave no reason for turning down the appeal after months of reviewing the case, but their decision was likely not affected by recent mass shootings, SCOTUS blog reporter Lyle Denniston contends.

“There is no basis for a different result when our Second Amendment precedents are at stake”, Thomas wrote.

In rejecting a challenge to the law, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, said “assault weapons with large-capacity magazines can fire more shots, faster, and thus can be more risky in the aggregate”. Two justices said they would invalidate the ordinance, but the others refused to take that step.

The Supreme Court will not hear the appeal of a group of Chicago area gun enthusiasts who unsuccessfully challenged a local community’s ban on assault weapons.

The plaintiffs were gun owner Arie Friedman, a pediatrician, and the Illinois State Rifle Association.

The case placed Highland Park, a mostly affluent suburb on the North Shore, in the midst of the heated battle over Second Amendment rights, but city officials said their goal always has been simply to keep mass shootings such as the one in Newtown, Conn., from happening there. Those opinions, decided by 5-4 votes along the court’s conservative-liberal divide, affirmed that some regulations of gun possession were permissible, such as bans on concealed weapons or possession of firearms by the mentally ill.

Some lawmakers have been hesitant to enact such bans in fear the law will be overturned by the courts.