By a vote of 7-2, the Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a Highland Park, Ill., resident and the Illinois State Rifle Association, who objected to Chicago’s 2013 ban on semiautomatic weapons and large-capacity magazines.
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Pediatrician Arie Friedman and the pro-gun Illinois State Rifle Association filed suit, saying his Second Amendment rights to bear arms under the US Constitution had been violated by the city of Highland Park’s ban. Federal courts have consistently upheld those laws. His office did not immediately return a request from DailyMail.com for comment on the Supreme Court’s decision. “There is no basis for a different result when our Second Amendment precedents are at stake”. Those bans are also being challenged.
Thomas and Scalia objected to the ban, as challenged in Friedman v. City of Highland Park, on the grounds it turned the Second Amendment into a “second-class right” and that responsible, law-abiding citizens should be able to protect themselves and their homes with the most popular rifle platform in the country.
Highland Park cited shootings in Aurora, Colo., and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in CT for prohibiting the semiautomatic weapons.
In October, the federal appeals court in NY largely upheld similar laws in CT and NY, among a handful of states that ban semi-automatic weapons.
And the court previous year refused to hear an appeal of a New Jersey law that sharply restricts the authority to carry a handgun in public by requiring proof of a justifiable need to carry a gun. Writing for the majority, Judge Frank Easterbrook said the court found there was a “substantial benefit” to the Highland Park ordinance if it makes the public feel less at risk from a mass shooting.
Thomas said the high court should have heard the appeal of that ruling in order to prevent that appeals court ‘from relegating the Second Amendment to a second-class right’.
The justices left room in the 2010 ruling for gun ownership restrictions, stating that their decision extending Second Amendment rights to states “does not imperil every law regulating firearms”.
The stockpile of guns and ammunition amassed by the alleged San Bernardino attackers – Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife Tashfeen Malik, 27, neither of whom were being actively monitored by law enforcement – suggested that the United States needs more stringent laws pertaining to the purchase of assault weapons, Obama said.
“Gun control has been winning in the lower courts”, he said, “so there’s little for supporters of gun laws to gain”. More generally, it prohibited possession of what it called assault weapons, defining them as semi-automatic guns that can accept large-capacity magazines and have features like a grip for the nontrigger hand.
I strongly disagree with so-called assault weapons bans. Opponents of gun control say, to the contrary, that the shootings demonstrated the limited effectiveness of such measures, since France and California already strictly regulate gun sales.
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In June, Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia protested the fact the full court wouldn’t review San Francisco’s handgun ordinance.
