The United States Supreme Court has once again declined on all pending firearm cases. Leaving concealed carry restrictions, assault weapon bans, magazine capacity bans, and like restrictions untouched from their previous rulings.
Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh signaled their willingness to go after the New Jersey case where an applicant for a concealed carry permit must show ‘justifiable need’ in some manner and ‘self-protection’ isn’t considered a justifiable need. A favorable ruling could have effectively ended the stain of ‘may issue’ concealed carry where an applicant must demonstrate some kind of specific extra threat upon their person to be allowed to carry a firearm for protection, an idiotic policy of the bureaucratic bog.
The court rejected a total of 10 cases that had piled up in recent months.
Other cases the court declined to take up included challenges to assault weapon bans in Massachusetts and Cook county, Illinois (Chicago). The court also turned down cases similar to the New Jersey dispute from Massachusetts and Maryland. It was disheartening that the court will not take on the 2A cases. They may be hesitant still with the goings on in the world and their ruling on Title VII protections has a strong legislating from the bench tone the court may need to let ride, especially on as contentious an issue as firearms.
The Title VII concern over LGBTQ discrimination in the workplace show starkly the nest of vipers that is the US Congress at the moment. The fact that so obvious a protection should have been amended in, but that the House and Senate did not, and the court instead ruled the protection applied was the focus of the dissenting opinions from the Justices. It may be that the court is not willing to take on such a situation again when it comes to the issue of firearms, which would be more divisive than hiring discrimination protection.
It may be that the pro-2A Justices, which only solidly amount to 4, don’t see enough support to risk any so important a case as shall issue concealed carry or assault weapon and magazine bans until one more pro-2A justice is appointed.
In any case… we are SOL for the moment.
