Supreme Court rejects challenge to assault weapons ban

Today, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a Chicago suburb’s assault weapons and large-capacity magazine ban – a law very similar to what we have in CT.

Though Friedman did not return numerous calls from the Daily North Shore nor respond to any of its emails to comment on the case, Richard Pearson, the executive director of the rifle association, said the Supreme Court action was a blip in the road.

The 2013 ordinance included on its list of prohibited guns the popular AR-15, considered an assault weapon under the ban because of its likeness to the military’s M-16 rifle, though manufactured to not fire automatically with one trigger pull.

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

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissented. But it strongly suggests the majority of the court does not see the Second Amendment as protecting a right to own or carry powerful weapons in public.

When Friedman filed the case, Elrod went to work trying to save the Highland Park taxpayers the expense of expensive litigation that could wind up in the Supreme Court.

In April, a federal appeals court upheld the assault-weapon ban in question, saying, “Highland Park’s ordinance leaves residents with many self‐defense options”. That court upheld the ban and Friedman appealed.

Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote for the court that there is a “substantial benefit” to the Highland Park ordinance if it makes the public feel less at risk from a mass shooting.

“Because the Second Amendment confers rights upon individual citizens – not state governments – it was doubly wrong for the Seventh Circuit to delegate to States and localities the power to decide which firearms people may possess”, the dissent said. Similar bans exist in California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii and CT. “We have plenty of laws on the books to stop this”. “This is a matter of national security”, he said.

Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Alito, said if the Court had granted certiorari, they would have voted to strike down the ban on automatic weapons.

In recent years, the justices have stayed out of state and local disputes over gun rights. “Mass shootings are rare, but they are highly salient, and people tend to overestimate the likelihood of salient events”, the appeals court said.

“Less than a decade ago, we explained that an ordinance requiring firearms in the home to be kept inoperable, without an exception for self-defense, conflicted with the Second Amendment because it ‘made it impossible for citizens to use (their firearms) for the core lawful objective of self-defense, ‘ ” Thomas wrote.

Police say the attackers in San Bernardino used such weapons as did the gunman who attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic two weeks ago in Colorado.

Adam Skaggs is senior counsel at Everytown for Gun Safety, the nation’s largest gun violence prevention organization.