Supreme Court won't hear challenge to assault-weapons ban; Thomas and Scalia dissent
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a challenge to a Chicago suburb’s ban on semi-automatic weapons.
The court denied cert on Monday morning, report the Chicago Tribune, SCOTUSblog and the Washington Post. The denial lets stand a decision by the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld the ban.
The law in Highland Park, Illinois, banned semiautomatic “assault” weapons and magazines that accept more than 10 rounds. Federal appeals courts in San Francisco and New York have also upheld laws that restrict rapid-fire weapons.
Seven states have similar restrictions. They are: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and New York.
Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the denial of certiorari in an opinion (PDF beginning after page 11) joined by Justice Antonin Scalia. “Noncompliance with our Second Amendment precedents warrants this court’s attention as much as any of our precedents,” Thomas wrote. “I would grant certiorari to prevent the 7th Circuit from relegating the Second Amendment to a second-class right.”
The U.S. Supreme Court recognized a Second Amendment right to keep a gun at home for self-defense in the 2008 decision, District of Columbia v. Heller. The Supreme Court found the Second Amendment applied to the states in the 2010 decision, McDonald v. City of Chicago.
Scalia wrote the Heller decision.
In the dissent from cert denial, Thomas said Heller and McDonald excluded from Second Amendment protection only those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes. “Instead of adhering to our reasoning in Heller,” Thomas wrote, “the 7th Circuit limited Heller to its facts, and read Heller to forbid only total bans on handguns used for self-defense in the home.”
Millions of Americans own semi-automatic firearms for lawful purposes such as self-defense, hunting and target shooting, Thomas wrote.
