The Supreme Court has declined to take up a case involving the constitutionality of AR-15s.
While Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch voted to hear the case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that the Court will hear the case “in the next Term or two.”
In a written statement on the case, Kavanaugh said, “Opinions from other Courts of Appeals should assist this Court’s ultimate decisionmaking on the AR–15 issue.” He noted, “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.”
Thomas declared that AR-15s are “clearly ‘Arms’ Under the Second Amendment’s plain text.”
“I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America,” he asserted. “That question is of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR–15 owners throughout the country. We have avoided deciding it for a full decade.”
In 2024, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Maryland law banning AR-15s. The court concluded that the firearms are “military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense.”
“Moreover, the Maryland law fits comfortably within our nation’s tradition of firearms regulation,” the ruling continued. “It is but another example of a state regulating excessively dangerous weapons once their incompatibility with a lawful and safe society becomes apparent, while nonetheless preserving avenues for armed self-defense.”
The law forbids owning or dealing in assault weapons, which are defined as a wide range of firearms including the AR-15, AK-47, and semiautomatic rifles with large capacity magazines.
