The Supreme Court turned away an appeal by a group of gun-rights advocates seeking to overturn Maryland's ban on AR-15 semi-automatic rifles under the Second Amendment.
The Supreme Court on Monday turned away an appeal by a group of gun rights advocates seeking to overturn Maryland's ban on assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines under the Second Amendment.
The decision, a major win for gun safety advocates, leaves in place a ruling by the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals which ruled that the state may constitutionally prohibit sale and possession of the weapons.
The state legislation, enacted in 2013 after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, specifically targets the AR-15 -- the most popular rifle in America with 20-30 million in circulation. They are legal in 41 of the 50 states.
Headline is misleading. SCOTUS turned the case down, they didn't "allow" anything and there's still potential for another case to be brought before the court.
Here's everything you need to know. CBS Sunday morning interviews a gun nut job. She states a demonstratively false statement about how many guns kill a people a year, and gets fucking zero push back. That's how we got to where we are. It's harder to get a driver's license than it is to get a gun.
EDIT: As we all know "knives and blunt objects" are obviously used to kill more people than assault rifles.
So this just bans that "style" of rifle? Someone can just go buy some other semi-automatic rifle that doesn't look as imposing or whatever but will still kill a person just as dead? I don't really get what this accomplishes other than inconveniencing people who already own one of the guns this prohibits.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who could have supplied the fourth vote needed to add the case to the court’s docket, issued a statement saying the question was significant and could soon warrant review but that he hoped additional opinions from lower courts could assist the justices on the issue. He wrote that the Supreme Court “should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next term or two.”
I've heard statements before the "assault weapons" bans are pretty weak in their description and can easily be skirted with mild modifications rendering a gun no longer meeting the definition. I got curious what Maryland's law text said. I found it here: link
I'll say that the law as written is very detailed with its criteria for what is banned including even minor items like have a threaded barrel such as one would need to mount a flash suppressor. They also go through many iterations of descriptions of magazine size, detachabilty, and thumb hole position.
Just curiosity in the spirit of my original question (guns that would be legal), but still likely run afoul of the spirit (but not the letter of this law), I found this one:
Franklin Armory F17
Its rare apparently, but "the Franklin Armory F17 is the only semi-auto 17 Winchester Super Mag available today."