The Supreme Court declined to take up a case on Maryland's AR-15 ban, allowing the Democratic state to continue throttling the Second Amendment rights of its residents - for now.
The court's denial raised objections from Justice Clarence Thomas, who said he "would not wait to decide" a question "of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR-15 owners."
Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch also said they would have taken the case. Four votes were needed to take up the issue.
In a brief opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said it is not necessary for the Supreme Court to get involved while lower courts continue to develop the case.
The Supreme Court has largely avoided altering the legal landscape on guns since its landmark decision three years ago in Bruen, which imposed a new historical test that made it significantly harder to regulate firearms.
But Kavanaugh predicted that the Supreme Court would likely decide the AR-15 issue in the next year or two.
"Opinions from other Courts of Appeals should assist this Court’s ultimate decision-making on the AR–15 issue. Additional petitions for certiorari will likely be before this Court shortly and, in my view, this Court should and presumably will address the AR–15 issue soon, in the next Term or two," he wrote.
In a fiery dissent, Justice Thomas argued that AR-15s are "clearly 'Arms' under the Second Amendment’s plain text."
He chastised the court for waiting to decide a matter of "critical importance."
"I would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America," Justice Thomas wrote. "The question is of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR-15 owners throughout the country."
The AR-15 is the most popular rifle in the U.S. and is arguably the most iconic firearm in the world.
The gun control lobby has long sought to paint the AR-15 as a "weapon of war" unfit for civilian use, although millions of Americans use AR-15s for lawful purposes without incident.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals repeated the "weapon of war" talking point in its 2024 ruling upholding Maryland's ban. The court held that AR-15s are "military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense.”
Kavanaugh called the appeals court's decision "questionable," suggesting he could help overturn it in the future.
"Given that millions of Americans own AR–15s and that a significant majority of the States allow possession of those rifles, petitioners have a strong argument that AR–15s are in 'common use' by law-abiding citizens and therefore are protected by the Second Amendment under Heller," he wrote.
