The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a challenge to Maryland’s gun ban, effectively allowing the state’s broad prohibition on the sale of AR-15-style rifles and similar weapons to remain in effect.
Gun rights advocates had urged the justices to hear the case, arguing that it was time for the Court to issue a definitive ruling on the status of AR-style rifles under its recent rulings expanding gun rights.
Although the Court declined to hear the case, several justices indicated that the issue is likely to return and that Maryland’s law could still be overturned in the future. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, a longtime Maryland resident who joined his colleagues in declining to hear the case, indicated he is waiting for more lower court rulings on the matter. However, he called Maryland’s ban — and the lower court decision that upheld it — “questionable.”
“Although the court today denies certiorari, a denial of certiorari does not mean that the court agrees with a lower-court decision or that the issue is not worthy of review,” he said in a statement. “Additional petitions for certiorari will likely be before this court shortly and, in my view, this court should and presumably will address the AR–15 issue soon, in the next term or two.”
Tens of millions of AR-15-style rifles are already in circulation and remain legal in over 40 states, making the states that seek to ban them notable exceptions. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented from the decision to deny the case, stating they believed the Supreme Court should have taken it up now.
“I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America,” he said. “We have avoided deciding it for a full decade.”
