The Supreme Court on Tuesday decided not to hear two sets of Second Amendment challenges: to an Illinois law banning the sale of high-powered weapons and high-capacity magazines and to a federal law that makes gun ownership a crime for people convicted of a felony.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they would have granted the petitions for review in the Illinois case.
The court has sent cases involving the federal felon law back to lower courts for reconsideration in light of its recent ruling in United States v. Rahimi, which upheld a similar law that criminalizes gun possession for people subject to domestic violence restraining orders.
The moves suggest that the Supreme Court, which handed down two major gun-related decisions in a session that ended Monday, is not ready to revisit the issue just yet.
In his opinion in the Illinois case, Judge Thomas wrote that “we have never explicitly stated what types of weapons are ‘weapons’ protected by the Second Amendment.”
He criticized the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Illinois for a preliminary ruling upholding the law, calling the decision “contrived” and “nonsensical.”
“This Court must provide more guidance on what weapons the Second Amendment covers,” Justice Thomas wrote. “By twisting the little guidance our precedents provide, the Seventh Circuit concluded that the Second Amendment does not protect ‘militaristic’ weapons. It then tautologically defined ‘militaristic’ weapons as weapons ‘that may be reserved for military use.’”
Citing one of his previous rulings, Judge Thomas wrote that “the Illinois ban is ‘highly suspect because it broadly prohibits everyday semi-automatic firearms used for lawful purposes.’”
Illinois law banned the sale of what critics call assault weapons, along with high-capacity magazines, after a mass shooting on July 4, 2022, in Highland Park, Illinois. A divided three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit, refused to block the law as the challenges continued.
“As we know from long experience with other fundamental rights, such as the right to freedom of expression, the right to peaceful assembly, the right to vote, and the right to the free exercise of religion, even the most important personal freedoms have their limits,” Judge Diane P. Woodappointed by President Bill Clinton, wrote on behalf of the majority. Judge Frank H. Easterbrookappointed by President Ronald Reagan, joined the majority opinion.
By way of exception, Judge Michael B. Brennanappointed by President Donald J. Trump, wrote that the majority had failed to follow a 2022 Supreme Court precedent, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruenrequiring courts to look to historical practices to assess the constitutionality of gun control measures.
“Because the prohibited firearms and magazines deserve constitutional protection, and the governing parties have failed to meet their burden of demonstrating that their prohibitions are part of the history and tradition of firearms regulation,” he wrote, “preliminary injunctions are warranted against enforcement of the challenged laws.”
The Supreme Court ruled last month that the government can disarm people who have been given restraining orders because of domestic violence.
The Biden administration has asked the Supreme Court to hear subsequent cases on a much more important Second Amendment issue: Should people convicted of a felony be permanently barred from owning firearms?
The suspect in the domestic violence case, Zackey Rahimi, a Texas drug dealer, was a strikingly unattractive figure. According to court records, Mr. Rahimi threatened women with firearms and was involved in five shootings over a two-month period.
One of the defendants in the new series of cases, Bryan Range, is more sympathetic. Range pleaded guilty to a nonviolent crime decades ago while struggling to feed his three young children. He admitted in 1995 in Pennsylvania state court to making false statements to obtain food stamps.
That was a felony, but it carried a maximum sentence of five years. It was enough to count as the equivalent of a misdemeanor under a federal gun law that makes it a crime for anyone convicted of “a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than one year” to possess a firearm.
Mr Range served three years on probation and the only blemishes on his record since then have been minor traffic and parking violations and fishing without a license.
He filed a lawsuit in 2020 challenging the gun law, arguing it violated the Second Amendment. Prosecutors have acknowledged that his conviction for making a false statement involved neither drugs nor violence.
The Third Circuit ruled in favor of Mr. Range.
“Because the government has failed to demonstrate that our Republic has a long history and tradition of depriving people like Range of firearms,” Judge Thomas M. Hardiman wrote for the majoritythe challenged law “cannot constitutionally deprive him of his Second Amendment rights.”
By way of exception, Judge Cheryl Ann Krause wrote that the ruling was a recipe for chaos, “leaving our citizens reeling from the consequences.”
She urged the justices to intervene. “The sooner the Supreme Court addresses this issue,” she wrote, “the more secure our Republic will be.”
In his petition for reviewThe Biden administration told the justices that the Third Circuit had “opened the doors of the courthouse to an unknown number of future challenges by other criminals based on their own specific offenses, histories, and personal circumstances.”
In an unusual move, Mr Range’s lawyers agreed that the court must hear the case, Garland v. ReachNo. 23-374, even though their client had won in the lower case.
The Supreme Court, apparently not eager to return to the Second Amendment topic so quickly, instead sent the case back to the Third Circuit “for further consideration in light of United States v. Rahimi.”
