The laws in New York and Connecticut, among the strictest in the
nation, were enacted after a gunman with a semiautomatic rifle killed 20
young children and six educators in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary
School in Newtown, Connecticut.
U.S. Supreme Court rejects challenge to state assault weapon bans
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left in place gun control laws in New York and Connecticut that ban assault weapons like the one used in last week's massacre at an Orlando nightclub, rejecting a challenge brought by gun rights advocates.
The
court's action underlined its reluctance to insert itself into the
simmering national debate on gun control. The justices have not made a
major gun rights ruling since 2010.
The justices
declined to hear an appeal of an October ruling by the New York-based
2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld laws prohibiting
semiautomatic weapons and large capacity magazines in the two
northeastern states.
The laws in New York and
Connecticut, among the strictest in the nation, were enacted after a
gunman with a semiautomatic rifle killed 20 young children and six
educators in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
The
challengers had asserted that the laws violated the U.S. Constitution's
protection of the right to bear arms. The court denied the appeal with
no comment or recorded vote.
The gunman in the
June 12 attack at an Orlando gay night club that killed 49 people, the
deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, used a semiautomatic
rifle that would have been banned in New York and Connecticut.
In
total, seven states and the District of Columbia ban semi-automatic
rifles. A national law barring assault weapons expired in 2004, and
congressional Republicans and some Democrats, backed by the influential
National Rifle Association gun rights lobby, beat back efforts to
restore it.
The United States has
among the most permissive gun policies in the world. Because the U.S.
Congress has been a graveyard for gun control legislation, some states
and localities have enacted their own measures.
The
U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms,
but there is a longstanding legal debate over its scope.
The Supreme Court issued important rulings in gun cases in 2008 and 2010 but has not taken up a major firearms case since.
In
December, the court declined to hear a challenge to a Illinois town's
assault weapons ban. But the justices in March threw out a Massachusetts
court ruling that stun guns are not covered by the Second Amendment and
sent the case back to the state's top court for further proceedings.
In the 2008 District of Columbia
v. Heller case, the court held for the first time that the Second
Amendment guaranteed an individual's right to bear arms, but the ruling
applied only to firearms kept in the home for self-defense. That ruling
did not involve a state law and applied only to federal regulations. Two
years later, in the case McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court held that the Heller ruling covered individual gun rights in states.
The court lost one of its strongest pro-gun rights members in February when conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died.
The
expired federal assault gun ban had barred the manufacture and sale of
semi-automatic guns with military-style features as well as magazines
holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
The New York and Connecticut laws were challenged by pro-gun groups including the Coalition
of Connecticut Sportsmen and the New York State Rifle and Pistol
Association as well as individual gun owners. The appeals court
consolidated the two cases and upheld the law.
The Connecticut challengers appealed to the Supreme Court while the New York ones did not. However, an individual gun owner, Douglas Kampfer,
who had a parallel legal challenge to the New York law that also lost
at the appeals court level asked the Supreme Court to hear his case.
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