CNN
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The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear arguments in a significant Second Amendment challenge to Maryland’s ban on certain semi-automatic weapons, a move that leaves the state’s law in place.
Maryland’s ban, enacted after the deadly 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, prohibits the sale or ownership of certain semi-automatic weapons such as AR- and AK-style rifles. The law was challenged by David Snope, a state resident who wants to purchase those rifles for self-defense and other purposes.
The Supreme Court also declined to hear a challenge over Rhode Island’s ban on high-capacity gun magazines, leaving that law in place.
Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented from the court’s decision not to hear the pair of cases.
The 2022 Rhode Island law prohibits the possession of large-capacity feeding devices or magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. It requires owners of such devices to either modify them to fit the 10-round limit, sell them to a firearms dealer, remove them from Rhode Island or hand them over to law enforcement.
The law required such action to be taken within 180 days of its passage, after which time violators faced up to five years in prison.
In the Maryland case involving automatic rifles, the Richmond-based federal appeals court upheld Maryland’s law over the summer, finding that the guns at issue are “dangerous and unusual weapons” and therefore are not covered by the Second Amendment’s protections. The majority also concluded that there were historical analogues to the Maryland statute that were adopted by state legislatures across the country in the 19th and 20th century.
