Gun-Rights Group Urges Supreme Court To Hear Maryland AWB Challenge

The Firearms Coverage Coalition (FPC) on Wednesday filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court docket urging the courtroom to listen to its lawsuit difficult Maryland’s ban on many frequent semi-automatic firearms.

Within the case Snope v. Brown, the 4th Circuit Court docket of Appeals dominated on August 6 that Maryland’s so-called “assault weapons” ban was constitutional beneath the Second Modification, a choice that FPC believes was flawed. Plaintiffs within the case included two people, the FPC, the Second Modification Basis and the Residents Committee for the Proper to Hold and Bear Arms.

“As promised, we’ve petitioned the Supreme Court docket to evaluate the Fourth Circuit’s horrible determination at once,” Brandon Combs, FPC president, mentioned in a information launch asserting the motion. :As a petition from a last judgment with the most effective Second Modification litigators on the planet on the helm, this case is a perfect car for the Supreme Court docket to resolve exceptionally essential points. By this case, the Court docket can and will make specific how decrease courts ought to handle unconstitutional bans on so-called ‘assault weapons’ and comparable legal guidelines.”

Combs added that for years, decrease courts have “contorted” the Supreme Court docket’s precedents and wrongly held that the Second Modification doesn’t defend semi-automatic firearms.

“However these weapons are frequent numerically, categorically and jurisdictionally, fashionable for a variety of lawful functions from self-defense to sport,” Combs added. “There isn’t a official foundation for the 4th Circuit to have concluded that essentially the most extensively owned semi-automatic rifles in the USA are usually not ‘Arms’ protected by the Second Modification. The Court docket should present extra steering on which weapons the Second Modification covers and they need to accomplish that on this case. This immoral and abusive gun management regime should finish right here.” 

Within the petition filed with the Supreme Court docket, FPC argues: “Certiorari is required to appropriate this more and more widespread misunderstanding of Heller and to make sure that the Second Modification itself is just not truncated right into a restricted proper to personal sure state-approved means of non-public self-defense. And actually, members of the bulk on this case joined a refrain of decrease courtroom judges asking for this Court docket’s steering, noting the importance of the questions implicated right here and the necessity for the Court docket’s additional path to deliver order to the legislation.”

FPC additionally argued: “The recognition of the AR-15 is among the many most well-evidenced, and steadily mentioned, details about firearms within the nation. There are, by nearly all estimates, significantly extra trendy semi-automatic rifles just like the AR-15 in the USA than there are Ford F-150s, America’s hottest car. And that’s despite the legal guidelines, like Maryland’s right here, that prohibit tens of tens of millions of People from a few of our most populous states from buying them.”

Ultimately, plaintiffs are asking the Supreme Court docket to listen to the case at once and rule, as soon as and for all, whether or not bans on frequent semi-automatic rifles ought to exist given the protections supplied by the Second Modification.