The Supreme Court turned away appeals challenging a Democratic-backed ban in Illinois on assault-style rifles like AR-15s and sidestepped several other gun-related disputes on Tuesday. The court has already agreed to hear a significant case concerning homemade “ghost guns” in its next term.
Illinois Assault Rifle Ban
The justices declined to hear cases appealing a lower court’s rejection of the argument that the Illinois ban violates the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The Illinois law, passed in 2023, bans the sale and distribution of many high-powered semiautomatic “assault weapons,” including AK-47 and AR-15 rifles, as well as large-capacity magazines. This law followed a massacre at a 2022 Independence Day parade in Highland Park, a Chicago suburb, where a gunman killed seven people.
In 2023, the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the challengers were unlikely to prevail, partly because the Second Amendment does not apply to the banned rifles and magazines. The court concluded that these weapons “are much more like machine guns and military-grade weaponry than they are like the many different types of firearms that are used for individual self-defense.”
Justice Samuel Alito indicated he would have heard the Illinois cases, while fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas voiced doubts about the 7th Circuit’s decision on the state’s ban. Thomas stated that the matter was still at a preliminary stage and the justices should review it in due course.
Other Gun-Related Disputes
The justices ordered lower courts to re-examine challenges to New York state’s law that bars firearms in numerous “sensitive places” and to federal laws that prohibit gun possession by people convicted of serious crimes and users of illegal drugs. The Supreme Court directed the lower courts to reassess their decisions in light of the Supreme Court’s June 21 ruling in U.S. v. Rahimi, which upheld a federal law banning domestic abusers from having guns.
Ghost Guns Case
The Supreme Court in April agreed to decide the legality of a federal regulation aimed at reining in “ghost guns” as President Joe Biden’s administration combats the increasing use of these largely untraceable weapons in crimes nationwide. The court will hear the case in its next term, starting in October. The justices took up the administration’s appeal of a lower court’s decision that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) exceeded its authority in issuing the 2022 rule targeting parts and kits for ghost guns, which can be assembled at home in minutes.
Recent Gun Rulings
The Supreme Court, in its recently completed nine-month term, issued two important gun rulings. Besides the Rahimi decision, the justices on June 14 rejected a federal ban on “bump stock” devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns.
The Supreme Court’s landmark 2008 ruling expanding gun rights noted that “M-16 rifles and the like” are not protected under the Second Amendment. On May 20, the Supreme Court also declined to hear a challenge to Maryland’s assault rifle ban.
Historical Context and Modern Gun Restrictions
The Supreme Court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has taken an expansive view of Second Amendment rights. In 2022, the court recognized a Second Amendment right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense, striking down New York state gun limits. That ruling established a legal standard requiring such measures to be comparable with the nation’s “historical tradition” of firearm restrictions to comply with the Second Amendment. However, the Rahimi ruling clarified that modern gun restrictions need only a historical “analogue,” not a “twin,” signaling the limits of the Bruen standard.
The New York law now at issue, enacted after the Bruen ruling, prohibits possessing a gun in “sensitive” locations such as courts, government buildings, schools, medical offices, public parks, theaters, and New York City’s popular Times Square.
Felon Gun Ownership
The cases concerning the scope of the ban on felons owning guns included challengers convicted of nonviolent crimes, such as Bryan Range, a Pennsylvania man convicted of welfare fraud. The Biden administration appealed a judicial decision that applying the ban to Range violated his Second Amendment rights. The administration also appealed a judicial decision backing an admitted marijuana user caught with guns in his car, who claimed the drug user gun ban violated his Second Amendment rights. This is the same law under which Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was convicted last month in Delaware.
