SCOTUS Rejects Challenge To MD AR-15 Ban, RI Ammo Limit

The Supreme Court kicked off its last month issuing decisions by refusing to hear two Second Amendment challenges to Maryland’s sweeping ban on AR-15s and Rhode Island’s restriction on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. The high bench’s rejection of both petitions effectively affirms the blue states’ decision to encroach on Americans’ right to bear arms.

AR-15s are the most popular semiautomatic rifle in the U.S. Under a 2013 Maryland gun grab labeled an “assault weapons ban,” however, residents of the so-called “Free State” were prohibited from owning an AR-15 or AK-47.

An appeals court upheld the ban in 2017. It was only after the Supreme Court’s historic defense of the Second Amendment in its 2022 Bruen v. New York ruling that the Maryland law was up for reconsideration.

The Second Amendment Foundation sued, claiming that the wide-ranging law encroached on Marylanders’ Second Amendment rights. They were dealt a blow when the Fourth Circuit Court upheld the ban and resorted to asking the Supreme Court to intervene.

The Rhode Island challenge stemmed from a 2022 law that made it a felony to possess a magazine that held more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Challengers petitioned the high bench after facing defeat in both district court and the First Circuit Court.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch all agreed they would grant the petition for writ of certiorari in the Maryland and Rhode Island cases, but their votes to hear the case fell short of the “Rule of Four” due the Democrat-nominated justices, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Kavanaugh claimed in his statement respecting the denial of the Maryland cert that it “does not mean that the Court agrees with a lower-court decision or that the issue is not worthy of review.”

“The AR–15 issue was recently decided by the First Circuit and is currently being considered by several other Courts of Appeals,” Kavanaugh noted.

In his dissent of the denial, Thomas had stronger words for his colleagues and the lower court that paved the way for a challenge. He argued that “it is difficult to see how Maryland’s categorical prohibition on AR–15s passes [constitutional] muster.”

Thomas traces problems with the denial all the way back August 2024, when the Fourth Circuit ruled against the challengers because they could not prove the right to bear AR–15s within “the historical scope of the right to keep and bear arms.”

“This reasoning is dubious at least twice over,” Thomas wrote. “The Fourth Circuit placed too high a burden on the challengers to show that the Second Amendment presumptively protected their conduct. And, its determination that AR–15s are dangerous and unusual does not withstand scrutiny.”

Thomas also claimed the Fourth Circuit “erred” when it determined AR-15s “fall within the historic exception for dangerous and unusual weapons.” Instead of noting the rifle’s prevalence and “common use “among law-abiding gun owners, the Fourth Circuit claimed in “its own independent investigation of AR–15s” that the rifles were disqualified from Second Amendment protection due to “military origin,” “firepower,” and “muzzle velocity.”

“Our Constitution allows the American people — not the government — to decide which weapons are useful for self defense,” Thomas reasoned.

Thomas concluded by noting the Fourth Circuit ruled the way it did over fears that affirming the right to bear AR-15s would “‘lea[d] to absurd consequences,’ such as a constitutional right to
own a ‘bazooka,’ ‘ricin pellet-firing umbrella gun,’ or even a ‘W54 nuclear warhead.’”

“To fend off the fantastical threat of Americans lobbing nuclear warheads at one another, the Fourth Circuit has allowed the very real threat of the government depriving Americans of the rifle that they most favor for protecting themselves and their families,” Thomas wrote. “Looking to the standards set ‘by American society’ rather than our judicial colleagues, I cannot see how AR–15s fall outside the Second Amendment’s protection.”

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.