By Andrew Chung (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a challenge to the legality of state restrictions on assault-style rifles and large-capacity ammunition magazines, passing up for now cases that offered the justices a chance to further expand gun rights. The justices turned away two appeals after lower courts upheld a ban in Maryland on powerful semiautomatic rifles such as AR-15s and one in Rhode Island restricting the possession of ammunition-feeding devices holding more than 10 rounds. The lower courts rejected arguments that the measures violate the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment right to "keep and bear arms." Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the court's decision to reject the appeals. A fourth conservative justice, Brett Kavanaugh, expressed sympathy in a statement accompanying the Maryland case toward the argument made by the challengers that AR-15s are in common use by "law-abiding citizens and therefore are protected by the Second Amendment." Kavanaugh said the court "presumably will address the AR–15 issue soon." In a nation bitterly divided over how to address firearms violence including numerous mass shootings, the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, often has taken an expansive view of the Second Amendment. In the two cases turned away on Monday, the challengers contended that states and courts are flouting precedents that make clear that the Second Amendment protects weapons that are in "common use." Maryland in 2013 enacted its ban on military-style "assault weapons" such as the AR-15 and AK-47 after a shooter used such a firearm in the 2012 mass killing of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The law carries a penalty of up to three years in prison. A Maryland resident who was seeking to purchase one of the banned guns, as well as three gun rights organizations including the Firearms Policy Coalition, sued. The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the challenge, saying assault weapons "are military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense." As such, the "excessively dangerous" firearms are not protected by the Second Amendment, it decided. The 4th Circuit said it refused "to wield the Constitution to declare that military-style armaments which have become primary instruments of mass killing and terrorist attacks in the United States are beyond the reach of our nation's democratic processes." The plaintiffs told the Supreme Court that the term "assault weapon" is a political term that is designed to exploit public confusion over machine guns and semiautomatic firearms. The banned weapons, they said, are "identical to any other semiautomatic firearm - arms that are exceedingly common and fully protected by the Second Amendment." Thomas wrote in a dissent on Monday that the court should not have waited to take up the case. "I doubt we would sit idly by if lower courts were to so subvert our precedents involving any other constitutional right," Thomas wrote. Gun safety groups welcomed the court's decision to let the laws in Maryland and Rhode Island stand. "Courts have repeatedly upheld laws limiting access to highly dangerous weapons," said David Pucino, legal director at Giffords Law Center. "They are proven measures that protect families and reduce gun violence." Rhode Island's law, passed in 2022 as a response to mass shootings, bars most "large-capacity feeding" devices such as a magazine or drum that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The state calls it a "mild restriction on a particularly dangerous weapons accessory," and that in mass shooting situations "any pause in fire, such as the pause to switch magazines, allows for precious seconds in which to escape or take defensive action." Four gun owners and a registered firearms dealer sued. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the claims. The Supreme Court broadened gun rights in landmark rulings in 2008 and 2010 as well as in a 2022 case that made it harder to defend gun restrictions under the Second Amendment, requiring them to be "consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." The court has been buffeted in recent years by challenges to gun restrictions. On March 26, it upheld a federal regulation targeting largely untraceable "ghost guns." The court last year struck down a federal ban on "bump stock" devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns. (Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
