SCOTUS Releases Opinions on Gun Rights Cases

The Supreme Court has been releasing opinions in a flurry as it winds up the session.

Several gun rights cases of interest were released.

In all, four major opinions were released.

Gun Rights Opinions Released

In Garland v. Range, the court vacated the lower court’s decision and remanded the case back to the 3^rd Circuit.

Range had been stripped of his Second Amendment rights after being convicted or lying about his income so that he could receive food stamps.

In United States v. Daniels, Daniels had been stopped because his car did not have a license plate, but police smelled marijuana on his person during the stop.

During the search of the vehicle, police found marijuana and two weapons, and he was eventually sentenced to 46 months for unlawful possession of a firearm while being a user of a controlled substance.

The decision in this case was influenced by the Rahimi v. United States case, which is the same reason why Hunter will lose any appeal he plans on his gun charges.

Antonyuk v. Steven was sent back to the circuit court for review to challenge the New York State’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA).

The last gun case on the docket was Harrel v. Raoul, which is challenging the “assault weapons ban” in the state of Illinois.

The court denied review of the case because it stated that the merits had not been properly reviewed (Alito would have granted the review).

However, the court warned the 7^th Circuit that it better follow the Constitution when it gets the case back.

Justice Thomas wrote, “The Seventh Circuit’s decision illustrates why this Court must provide more guidance on which weapons the Second Amendment covers.

“By contorting what little guidance our precedents provide, the Seventh Circuit concluded that the Second Amendment does not protect ‘militaristic’ weapons. It then tautologically defined ‘militaristic’ weapons as those ‘that may be reserved for military use.’

“The Seventh Circuit’s contrived ‘non-militaristic’ limitation on the Arms protected by the Second Amendment seems unmoored from both text and history).

“And, even on its own terms, the Seventh Circuit’s application of its definition is nonsensical. (‘The AR–15 is a civilian, not military, weapon. No army in the world uses a service rifle that is only semiautomatic’).”

All of these cases are likely to come back before the court after review from the lower courts.