The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a case regarding a Maryland law banning AR-15 rifle ownership, meaning a lower court’s ruling upholding the prohibition stands.
Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch all would have granted the petition to hear the Snope v. Brown case, but once again, Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, joined with the liberals to deny certiorari.
That means the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling from last August upholding the ban will remain in place.
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee, wrote for the 10-5 majority in the decision that his court would “decline to wield the Constitution to declare that military-style armaments which have become primary instruments of mass killing and terrorist attacks in the United States are beyond the reach of our nation’s democratic processes.”
Kavanaugh, who has been a more reliable conservative vote than Roberts or Barrett, explained in a statement regarding his decision, “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.”
“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,” he added.
So maybe there is some inside baseball going on.
But still, it was an odd position to take, with Kavanaugh even pointing out that in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case, the high court ruled that “the Second Amendment protects those weapons that are in ‘common use’ by law-abiding citizens.”
Further, he wrote, “Americans today possess an estimated 20 to 30 million AR–15s. And AR–15s are legal in 41 of the 50 States, meaning that the States such as Maryland that prohibit AR–15s are something of an outlier.”
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The Washington Times reported that “Maryland, Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware have assault weapon bans that cover AR-15s.”
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Thomas refuted the Kavanaugh position of waiting for the next case.
Thomas pointed out that as long as the Supreme Court leaves the issue of the legality of AR-15 ownership open, the federal government could step in with a regulation labeling it a machine gun, and therefore banning the firearm nationwide.
AR-15s require shooters to pull the trigger each time they want to fire, but modifications like bump stocks can be added to make the gun, in effect, fire much like an automatic weapon, according to the Times.
Not only will the proposed regs turn bump stock owners into instant felons, they can erroneously deem AR-15/bump stock fire to be “automatic fire.” Then a future anti-gun admin could deem AR-15s as full automatics under those circumstances.
Take action: https://t.co/PeffyixwJa pic.twitter.com/L7li1NOVsV
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) April 26, 2018
“I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America,” Thomas wrote. “We have avoided deciding it for a full decade.”
Adam Kraut — executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation, which challenged the Maryland law — responded to the Supreme Court decision to deny review of their case, posting on X, “It is an egregious error that the Court continues to sidestep addressing an important issue that requires its intervention.”
Today, the Supreme Court denied cert in @2AFDN’s challenge to Maryland’s Assault Weapons Ban. It is an egregious error that the Court continues to sidestep addressing an important issue that requires its intervention. Millions of Americans are disenfranchised from exercising…
— Adam Kraut (@theadamkraut) June 2, 2025
“Millions of Americans continue to be disenfranchised from exercising their complete Second Amendment rights by virtue of these categorical bans,” he added.
Why conservatives like Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Barrett will not uphold a central constitutional right is a mystery and undermines our republican form of government.
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