The News from SCOTUS Less Than Ideal

The Supreme Court has been a bit disappointing of late. Sure, we got the Bruen decision, which promised to upend the anti-gun agenda severely, but then we got cases like Rahimi to say nothing of the cases the Court didn’t take up.

This year, there are two potential cases before the Supreme Court, a challenge to Maryland’s semi-auto ban and a challenge to Rhode Island’s ban on standard capacity magazines.

What needs to happen is that the Court agrees to hear these cases. 

Unfortunately, so far, that’s not happening.

2A Breaking. Today’s SCOTUS order list makes no reference to Snope or Ocean State Tactical arms ban cases. Thus, if we do not receive a cert grant in next 7 days, neither case will be heard this term. The cases will be conferenced again on this Friday. After Friday, the next…

— Mark W. Smith/#2A Scholar (@fourboxesdiner) January 21, 2025

2A Breaking: SCOTUS just relisted Snope and Ocean State Tactical as expected for January 24. We need a cert grant by midnight January 24 or we are toast for this term imho

— Mark W. Smith/#2A Scholar (@fourboxesdiner) January 21, 2025

For the record, Snope is the case regarding Maryland’s semi-auto ban and Ocean State Tactical is the magazine ban case.

Both of these need to be heard, in part because there have been so many conflicting rulings over them, even in light of the Bruen decision.

I honestly don’t see why the Court isn’t taking these cases. Everything we know they look for is present. They all have lifetime appointments, so it’s not like they have to worry about whether taking the case is popular or not. So what gives?

Before we got Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, we had a recurring problem of the Court simply refusing to take gun cases. They’d opened the door with Heller and McDonald, then nothing. They kept ignoring cases where those precedents were being ignored by the lower courts.

We thought with those three, we’d actually see a change, and for a little while, we did.

It was short-lived, though.

Now, we might as well not even have a majority on the Court for all the good it does the Second Amendment.

However, all hope isn’t lost. We could, theoretically, still get cert for these two cases. If that happens, then we’ll hopefully see a ruling that puts both of these blatant infringements on our Second Amendment rights into the proverbial dustbin of history where…I can’t say where they belong, but only because they never should have existed in the first place.

But they’ll go away, which is what needs to happen now.

The big question is why haven’t they already done it and does that mean they won’t?

I honestly don’t have an answer for you, but I’m supremely disappointed–see what I did there?–with what we’ve seen out of the Court of late. Our right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right, one up there with free speech and freedom of religion. Here’s hoping that my disappointment is soon replaced with a much more joyful emotion.