U.S. Supreme Court rejects appeal of Maryland assault weapons ban

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a challenge to a Democratic-backed ban in Maryland on assault rifles such as AR-15s, avoiding the dispute while the Dispute continues in lower court.

The justices rejected an appeal from gun dealers, gun rights groups and several Maryland residents who argued the ban violated the right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment to the American Constitution.

The challengers had asked the Supreme Court to decide the legality of the ban before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, Virginia, issued a ruling in the case.

Other appeals still pending before the Supreme Court seek to challenge a similar law in Illinois banning assault rifles and high-capacity ammunition magazines. The judges did not take action on those cases Monday.

The availability of assault rifles, popular among gun enthusiasts, continues to fuel fierce debate in a deeply divided country over how to combat gun violence, including frequent mass shootings.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has taken a broad view of Second Amendment rights.

In 2022, the court recognized the constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense in a ruling that struck down New York State's gun limits on carrying concealed firearms .

The court is expected to rule by the end of June on two major cases involving gun rights. One involves a challenge to a federal law prohibiting people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from owning firearms. The second is a challenge to a federal ban on “bump stocks” — devices that allow semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns.

Maryland enacted its ban on “military-style assault rifles” such as the semi-automatic AR-15 and AK-47 in 2013, after a shooter used such a weapon in the massacre of 20 children and six adults in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The Maryland plaintiffs – residents seeking to purchase the banned weapons, a gun dealer called Field Traders and three gun rights groups including the Second Amendment Foundation – sued the state in 2020.

Challenging the term “assault weapon” as an inaccurate “political term,” the Maryland plaintiffs said assault weapons cannot be banned outright because they are “in common use” by millions of law-abiding people.

The 4th Circuit rejected their case based on a 2017 decision by that same court that upheld Maryland's ban after finding that, under 2008 Supreme Court precedent, assault weapons are not not protected by the Second Amendment because they are like “weapons of war” which are most useful in military service.

After the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in the New York case, the justices asked the 4th Circuit to review the case brought by the Maryland plaintiffs. The 4th Circuit decided in January to rehear the case before its full bench, and it remains pending.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; editing by Will Dunham)