On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to an “assault weapons” ban in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park. Since declaring an individual right to bear arms, the court has largely stayed out of the gun control question altogether, refusing the pleas of gun rights advocates, in addition to many states that have urged the court to rule again and expand the right to gun ownership.
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But a federal judge upheld the law, and the 7th Circuit Court did the same in a 2-1 decision in April.
Since then, the justices have repeatedly refused to hear appeals from gun rights advocates who have sought to extend the Second Amendment right beyond handguns at home, to include, for example, carrying weapons in public. The Supreme Court seems to be the only political institution disinterested in a potential rewrite of gun laws.
Highland Park was one of fewer than 20 municipalities, all in the Chicago area, to enact regulations or bans, according to the rifle association.
In a speech from the Oval Office on Sunday evening, President Barack Obama continued to call for a ban on assault rifles.
“The Court’s refusal to review a decision that flouts two of our Second Amendment precedents stands in marked contrast to the Court’s willingness to summarily reverse courts that disregard our other constitutional decisions”. More than five million are manufactured each year, and they are said to out-sell handguns and are about equal in sales to shotguns.
Finally, it may be that there is some sentiment within the court to allow the lower courts to continue to wrestle with the sequel cases, and maybe there is some desire to let state and local governments experiment with different approaches to gun control.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissented, saying that lower courts have been ignoring Supreme Court precedents on Second Amendment rights.
High-capacity magazines can hold as many as 100 rounds of ammunition, increasing a shooter’s ability to injure or kill large numbers of people quickly. “People use them for sport, for target shooting, for self-defense”. “If a ban on semiautomatic guns and large-capacity magazines reduces the perceived risk from a mass shooting, and makes the public feel safer as a result, that’s a substantial benefit”, he added. Variations of the Bushmaster AR-15, one of the guns specifically banned by Highland Park, were used in the Newtown, Connecticut school massacre and the theater shootings in Aurora, Colorado.
The court does not publish explanations when it decides to deny an appeal, so it’s unclear why seven of the nine justices thought the Highland Park ban on assault weapons should stand.
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The Illinois State Rifle Association, which filed a lawsuit to challenge the Highland Park law’s constitutionality, said the weapons are in no way unusual.
