Home Daily News Supreme Court won't hear challenge to gun…

U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court won't hear challenge to gun lockup law; dissent sees Second Amendment double standard

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to consider a challenge to a San Francisco law that requires handgun owners to keep their weapons locked up or disabled while they are sleeping.

The cert denial prompted a dissent (PDF) by Justice Clarence Thomas, who said the law significantly burdens the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense. His dissent was joined by Justice Antonin Scalia.

The San Francisco law requires handgun owners to keep their weapons locked up or disabled when at home, unless the person is a police office or unless the handgun is carried on the person of an individual above 18. “Because it is impossible to ‘carry’ a firearm on one’s person while sleeping,” Thomas wrote, “petitioners contended that the law effectively denies them their right to self-defense at times when their potential need for that defense is most acute.”

Thomas said there was something “seriously amiss” in a decision upholding the law by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court said the law burdened core Second Amendment rights, but the burden wasn’t as severe as the law struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2008 decision, District of Columbia v. Heller.

Thomas said the Supreme Court’s refusal to grant cert “is difficult to account for in light of its repeated willingness to review splitless decisions involving alleged violations of other constitutional rights.”

Thomas said the U.S. Supreme Court should have granted cert “to reiterate that courts may not engage in this sort of judicial assessment as to the severity of a burden imposed on core Second Amendment rights.” The case is Jackson v. San Francisco.