On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down an appeal that questioned Delaware’s ban on assault-style rifles and large-capacity magazines. The court also turned down a case about Maryland’s handgun licensing requirements.
In this way, the Court avoided having to deal with two important cases that involved the controversial issue of gun rights.
A group of gun owners and gun rights groups tried to appeal to the justices, but they turned them down. They wanted to stop Delaware’s ban on “assault weapons” and magazines that can hold more than 17 rounds. This was after a lower court decided not to issue a preliminary injunction.
Reuters said that these kinds of guns have been used in a number of mass shootings in the U.S., but FBI crime statistics show that handguns are used in the vast majority of gun-related murders.
There was also an appeal from the gun rights group Maryland Shall Issue and other plaintiffs, but the justices did not hear it. They were challenging a lower court’s decision that the state’s licensing law was legal under the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
The justices chose not to hear these two cases, but they did not rule on two other appeals that were against Maryland’s ban on assault weapons and one in Rhode Island that was against the state’s ban on large-capacity magazines.
With a 6-3 conservative majority, the Supreme Court has always taken a “originalist” view of gun rights in major decisions going back to 2008.
The AR-15 and AK-47 are two examples of semiautomatic “assault” rifles that are illegal in Delaware because of gun safety laws that were passed in 2022. However, people who owned these weapons before the laws were passed can keep them as long as they meet certain requirements. The law also doesn’t allow large-capacity magazines, which means that devices owned before the law was made will not work.
People from the state who want to buy the illegal guns or magazines, a gun dealer, the Firearms Policy Coalition, and the Second Amendment Foundation are the ones challenging the law.
They said the lower courts made a mistake when they said that “deprivation of Second Amendment rights necessarily constitutes an irreparable injury.” In 2023, the plaintiffs asked a federal judge for an injunction, but the judge said no. That decision was upheld in 2024 by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in Philadelphia.
The plaintiffs’ claim that an injunction is basically needed in this case was called into question by the 3rd Circuit. “Preliminary injunctions are not automatic,” the 3rd Circuit said.
“Instead, custom and history have long saved them for very special occasions.” “This is not a strange case,” the court said.
Maryland’s law from 2013 says that most people must get a qualification license before they can buy a handgun. Those who want to apply must get their fingerprints taken, go through training, and have their backgrounds checked.
The challengers say the process is too hard to follow and that the need to finish it “can take a month or longer” makes people less likely to use their Second Amendment rights. Maryland, on the other hand, says that the requirements for fingerprinting and safety courses “significantly improve public safety.” The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the state.
In October, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case about whether a 2022 federal regulation put forward by the Biden administration to target “ghost guns” (guns that can’t be tracked) that are being used in more and more crimes was legal. By the end of June, a decision should be made.
On March 4, the justices will hear arguments in another gun case. In this case, U.S. gun companies Smith & Wesson and Interstate Arms are trying to get a lawsuit filed by Mexico thrown out. The lawsuit says that they helped bring guns into the country illegally for drug cartels in Mexico.
As of last year, the Supreme Court said that the federal ban on “bump stock” devices, which make semiautomatic weapons fire more quickly than machine guns, was illegal. Reuters also said that the justices have overturned major gun laws in important cases in 2008, 2010, and 2022.
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