After spending many weeks and months kicking the can, SCOTUS screws gun owners in ban states by denying both Snope and Ocean State Tactical.
Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and likely Kavanaugh would have granted. Likely means Barrett screwed us as did Roberts.
Kavanaugh writes…
Statement of JUSTICE KAVANAUGH respecting the denial of certiorari.
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In short, under this Court’s precedents, the Fourth Circuit’s decision is 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. The AR–15 issue was recently decided by the First Circuit and is currently being considered by several other Courts of Appeals.
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Opinions from other Courts of Appeals should assist this Court’s ultimate decision making on the AR–15 issue. 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.
Thomas, in his dissent, writes:
I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America. That question is of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR–15 owners throughout the country. We have avoided deciding it for a full decade. And, further percolation is of little value when lower courts in the jurisdictions that ban AR–15s appear bent on distorting this Court’s Second Amendment precedents. I doubt we would sit idly by if lower courts were to so subvert our precedents involving any other constitutional right. Until we are vigilant in enforcing it, the right to bear arms will remain “a second-class right.”
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The constitutional status of AR–15s is all the more urgent after this Court’s decision in Bondi v. VanDerStok. Recently amended regulations of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) provide that a “firearm” under the Gun Control Act includes objects that “may readily be completed, assembled, restored, or otherwise converted to” a working firearm. In VanDerStok, this Court refused to hold that definition unlawful, reasoning that an “artifact noun”—that is, a “word for a thing created by humans”—may “refer to unfinished objects,” and thus that weapon parts kits are as regulable as the firearms they might eventually become. But, “‘every single AR–15 can be converted to a machinegun using cheap, flimsy pieces of metal—including coat hangers.’” Thus, on the Court’s logic, it seems that ATF could at any time declare AR–15s to be machineguns prohibited by federal law. Until we resolve whether the Second Amendment forecloses that possibility, law-abiding AR–15 owners must rely on the goodwill of a federal agency to retain their means of self-defense. That is “no constitutional guarantee at all.” I respectfully dissent.
What this means is those in ban states have to wait even longer for SCOTUS to take up ruling on the constitutionality of AWB’s and magazine bans that otherwise appear to violate both Heller and Bruen. In the mean time ban states will continue to use interest balancing testing, in defiance of Bruen, as their way to upholding state anti gun laws.