Supreme Court dodges new fights over gun rights

The Supreme Court on Tuesday steered clear of two high-profile fights over gun rights, even as one justice warned that the court would have to wade back into the issue soon.

The court declined to hear a set of cases challenging Illinois’ ban on certain semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines. The court also said it would not take up several challenges to a federal law barring people with felony convictions from having guns.

In both sets of cases, challengers have argued that the laws in question violate the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. But after issuing two blockbuster Second Amendment rulings in the past two years, the justices appear reluctant to jump immediately back into another gun controversy.

In 2022, the court dramatically expanded Second Amendment rights by declaring in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen that modern gun restrictions must adhere to historical practices. Then, last month, in United States v. Rahimi, the court seemed to back away from the most extreme consequences of that history-based test: It upheld a federal law banning alleged domestic abusers from having firearms.

But the constitutionality of many other gun laws remains in doubt in light of the Bruen ruling, with lower courts divided on how to apply the history-based test.

Illinois passed its ban on certain high-powered weapons, including AR-15s, after a mass shooting during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, in 2022. The gunman killed seven people and wounded 30.

A federal appeals court refused to block the law last year, ruling that AR-15s are “not protected by the Second Amendment.” That prompted several gun owners and pro-gun groups to petition the Supreme Court to take up the issue.

On Tuesday — in a lengthy order list issued the day after the justices began their summer recess — the court turned down the petitions. Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the court’s decision to decline, but did not explain his reasoning.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a three-page statement saying the cases were too premature for the court to take up now — but arguing that the high court should soon weigh in on the constitutionality of AR-15s and similar weapons.

The “minimal guidance” the court has given in its decisions so far, Thomas wrote, “is far from a comprehensive framework for evaluating restrictions on types of weapons, and it leaves open essential questions such as what makes a weapon bearable, dangerous or unusual.”

Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion in the Bruen case and was the lone dissenter in Rahimi, is the court’s staunchest advocate of broad Second Amendment rights.

Also in Tuesday’s order list, the court dealt with several cases involving the federal law that disarms people with felony convictions. That law has been subject to numerous challenges in recent years, particularly from people with non-violent convictions. The court declined to take up the issue, instead sending the cases back to lower courts with instructions to reevaluate the felon-in-possession ban in light of the Rahimi ruling.