Good News and Bad News From Supreme Court on Monday

While there are a lot of good things gun rights advocates can celebrate, including at least four years of knowing that gun control won’t pass at the federal level unless something very strange happens, but that doesn’t mean everything is good news.

There are way too many anti-gun states still for that to be the case.

So, as a result of that, we need to use the courts to overturn some of these insane laws. Eventually, at least some of them need to go to the Supreme Court where, hopefully, the justices will slap the laws down and down hard.

And on that front, there’s some good news and some not-so-good news.

Let’s start with the good news.

The United States Supreme Court has set an official conference date of December 13 to decide if the High Court will hear Snope v. Brown, a case directly challenging Maryland’s assault weapon ban, addressing whether states can legally ban semi-automatic rifles such as the AR-15, commonly owned and used by law-abiding citizens. While some say this case has the potential to redefine the future of firearm legislation across the nation, the fact that arguments are so deeply rooted in precedent set by earlier landmark Second Amendment decisions such as District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022) makes one wonder, haven’t we been here before?

It has been over a decade and a half since Heller affirmed that firearms “in common use” for lawful purposes cannot be banned, a principle further solidified just over two years ago when Bruen held that firearm laws must be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, rejecting the use of “means-end” tests by future courts when evaluating firearm restrictions. These precedents are central, and one could say redundant, to the arguments outlined in Snope v. Brown, however, that has not stopped states like Maryland from enacting laws that fly in the face of previous SCOTUS rulings. 

The truth is that Maryland and every other state with an assault weapon ban on the books needs to get over it. The mean-end testing that used to be applicable to gun control laws no longer applies, which is good because I don’t see how that wasn’t subjective as Hades.

Of course, this is really just the next step in a process that was already in motion and doesn’t necessarily mean all that much except that we’ll get a feel for where the justices will come down on this one. I’d like to say Bruen tells us exactly what happened, but then Rahimi suggested otherwise. In a few days, we’ll have some more to go on.

Hopefully, it’ll be clear that assault weapon bans’ days are numbered.

That’s the goodish news.

Now, the not-so-good.

The Supreme Court declined to intervene or overturn a Hawaii State Supreme Court decision that allowed the state to prosecute a man carrying a loaded pistol without a license.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito criticized the Hawaii court’s ruling, but supported the U.S. Supreme Court’s move on technical grounds. Thomas wrote that the court should hear an “appropriate” case to “make clear that Americans are always free to invoke the Second Amendment as a defense against unconstitutional firearms-licensing schemes.”

…

Thomas, writing Monday, said: “Had the Hawaii Supreme Court followed its duty to consider the merits of Wilson’s defense, the licensing scheme’s unconstitutionality should have been apparent.”

He noted that Wilson could ask the Supreme Court to review the case again — a view echoed by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

This is, of course, the “Aloha Spirit” case that stirred up so much hate and discontent.

The truth is that Hawaii’s licensing scheme is incredibly problematic, and rather than make the case that no, it really wasn’t, the judges there simply pretended that it doesn’t matter because their state’s history is somehow completely different from the rest of the nation’s. Granted, Hawaii wasn’t exactly one of the original 13 colonies or anything, but neither were most other states. Our nation’s founding predated and supersedes state history on matters of constitutional law and, frankly, I wish the justices had opted to hear it.

Cam should have more on this case later today.

In the meantime, though, the good news here–the reason I didn’t call it “bad news”–is that Wilson can kick off the process again, and at least two justices seem to want him to do just that. I hope he does and I hope gun rights groups through the nation help with that, because if Hawaii can get away with what’s on the books there, someone else is going to do it and argue it’s justified.