The Supreme Court’s Decade of Dithering on Hardware Cases Comes at a High Cost to Gun Owners

The Supreme Court’s ongoing “percolation” regarding the constitutionality of assault weapons bans isn’t free. While the Court awaits more rulings that won’t provide it any more insight, more states pass unconstitutional laws. Virginia and New Mexico are likely to become the latest. The delays also change the status quo and allows antigun states to claim any eventual ruling striking down AWBs would be “too disruptive.”

This nonsense has been going on for over a decade. So many more people have had their right to bear arms stripped from them since the Supreme Court denied cert in the first wave of “assault weapon” cases back in 2015 over the dissent of Justices Scalia and Thomas. A lot more states have since passed various bans.

People don’t live forever while the Court dilly dallies. Waiting more than a decade to decide these issues has a real cost to people’s liberties. People like Sam Paredes spent decades fighting for their rights in antigun states like California, only to pass away before the Court could be bothered to take up their case. It’s enraging just how much their neglect has hurt us.

Maybe there was nothing SCOTUS could do back in 2015 with a 5-4 court with a squish like Justice Kennedy who didn’t want to go any further than Heller did. But now, since 2020, the votes are either there or it’s time we find out if Roberts and Barrett are going to stab (shoot?) us in the back.

It’s great that the Third Circuit will probably give us a circuit split at last. But that was always a lame excuse for delay, and it never should have taken this long. Until now, only antigun circuits have heard AWB cases, and even then, they upheld them over angry dissents.

Those dissents essentially are what the majority of any pro-gun circuit would say. So SCOTUS never needed to wait for a circuit split. It’s not like they don’t know what the counterarguments are. Further, Dobbs proved that this Court isn’t scared to issue controversial rulings.

So that tells me it isn’t that the Roberts Court isn’t willing to stick its neck out for the Constitution. They just aren’t that willing to do it for the Second Amendment, which despite what they may say, they’ve treated as a second-class right. So cert now. Hell, per curiams now. Most of the major issues are simple and shouldn’t even need full arguments.

Finally, the delays are outrageously expensive.

When the Court denied Snope last year, Kavanaugh said they’ll probably resolve these issues in a year or two. You know what that means for the Snope plaintiffs? They’re out all of their attorneys fees (which can only be recovered if you win).

Being vindicated two years later — when SCOTUS hopefully decides a basically identical case —  doesn’t count. The Second Amendment Foudation was one of those plaintiffs in Snope, as it has been in other cases denied cert. Those member dollars are lost forever because John Roberts didn’t feel like taking a hardware case yet.

 

Kostas Moros is Director of Legal Research and Education for the Second Amendment Foundation. This post was adapted by SNW from an article posted at X.