Have the Justices Gone Gun-Shy?
Five years after its landmark gun-rights decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court is avoiding any cases about the Second Amendment.
MATT FORD DEC 7, 2015
The U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear thousands of cases each year, so in one sense, Monday’s announcement that it wouldn’t take up Friedman v. Highland Park wasn’t much of a surprise. But among the 130 cases the Court declined to grant certiorari on Monday morning, only one elicited a dissent from two justices.
Arie Friedman challenged Highland Park’s assault-weapons ban, which prohibits residents from buying, selling, or owning some types of semiautomatic firearms. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Chicago surburb’s ban by narrowly interpreting the Court’s recent Second Amendment rulings, which focused on handguns.
That ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his dissent from the denial of certiorari, “eviscerated many of the protections recognized” by the Supreme Court. More importantly, he argued, the Court’s refusal to summarily reverse the Seventh Circuit or even hear the case at all risked “relegating the Second Amendment to a second-class right.” Justice Scalia joined his opinion without comment.