Court declined to hear a challenge to a 2013 state ban enacted in Maryland, and also a Florida man’s challenge to state ban on openly carrying a firearm

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The US supreme court, which has avoided major gun cases for seven years, on Monday declined to hear a National Rifle Association-backed challenge to a 2013 state ban on assault weapons enacted in Maryland after the Connecticut elementary school massacre.



The NRA is smaller than you'd think – so why does it wield such influence? Read more

The court also declined to hear a second gun-related case in which a Florida man convicted of openly carrying a firearm on the street sought to challenge that state’s ban on such activity.

In the Maryland case, the court turned away an appeal by several residents, firearms dealers and the state NRA, who argued that the ban violated their right to keep and bear arms under the second amendment. In doing so, the justices sidestepped the roiling national debate over the availability of military style guns.

The case focused on weapons that have become a recurring feature in mass shootings, including the 5 November attack at a Texas church that killed 25 people, the 1 October attack at a Las Vegas concert that killed 58 and the 2012 attack that killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, which prompted Maryland’s law.

Assault weapons are popular among gun enthusiasts. The challengers, who sued Maryland’s governor and other officials in 2013, appealed a February ruling by the fourth US circuit court of appeals in Richmond, Virginia, that upheld the Maryland law. The fourth circuit, ruling 10-4, said it had no power to extend constitutional protections to “weapons of war”.

Maryland’s ban outlaws “assault long guns”, which are mostly semi-automatic rifles such as the AR-15 and AK-47, as well as large-capacity magazines, which prevent the need for frequent reloading.

Backed by the influential NRA gun lobby, the plaintiffs said in a court filing that semi-automatic rifles were in common use and law-abiding citizens should not be deprived of them.

“The sands are always shifting with the supreme court,” said the Democratic Maryland attorney general Brian Frosh. “I hope that this means they have reached a conclusion that they are not going to fiddle with assault weapons bans across the country.”

The supreme court last year left in place assault weapon bans in New York and Connecticut.

“It’s inexplicable to me that people would allow the use of assault weapons when they see the carnage that has been inflicted on innocent victims around the country,” Frosh added.

The NRA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the Florida case, Dale Lee Norman, who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, was convicted of openly carrying a handgun in 2012 near his home in Fort Pierce, Florida. In March this year, the Florida supreme court rejected his challenge to the so-called open-carry ban, saying it did not violate his right to bear arms.



The US supreme court issued important rulings in gun cases in 2008 and 2010 but has not taken up a major firearms case since. It has repeatedly refused to second-guess lower court decisions upholding state and local restrictions on assault weapons, which filled a void after a federal ban expired in 2004.

In a landmark 2008 ruling, the supreme court for the first time found that the second amendment protected an individual’s right to gun ownership under federal law, specifically to keep a handgun at home for self-defense. In 2010, the court found that right extended to state and local laws as well.

‘Dead crawl’: Vegas gun shows said to slow in wake of Route 91 massacre Read more

Since then, gun rights advocates have been investigating how far those rights extend, including the types of guns and where they can be carried.

The fourth circuit, in upholding Maryland’s law, noted the disproportionate use of semi-automatic assault rifles in mass shootings and said these weapons were like the military’s M-16 machine guns, which the supreme court in its 2008 ruling agreed may be banned. There was also little evidence that such guns were well-suited for self-defense, the fourth circuit added.

The NRA criticized the fourth circuit for finding that “the second amendment provides absolutely zero protection to the most popular long guns in the country and standard-capacity ammunition magazines that number in the tens of millions”.