The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to assault weapons bans on June 20, just a week after the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
The assault weapons bans in question were passed in Connecticut and New York after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in which a man armed with a semi-automatic rifle fatally shot 20 students and six educators. The law banned certain kinds of semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines.
The New York Times reports:
The decision not to hear the case, not long after the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla., does not set a Supreme Court precedent. But it is part of a trend in which the justices have given at least tacit approval to broad gun-control laws in states and localities that choose to enact them.
The case, Shew v. Malloy, No. 15-1030, was brought by four individuals, a business and two advocacy groups. They said the ban was irrational, ineffective and unconstitutional.
“Connecticut dubs a semiautomatic firearm” with one of several common features “an ‘assault weapon,’ but that is nothing more than an argument advanced by a political slogan in the guise of a definition,” they told the Supreme Court in their petition seeking review.
In 2008 the Supreme Court recognized the right for handguns to be kept at home for self-defense in District of Columbia v. Heller. Federal courts have since ruled that statutes like the ban in Connecticut are not in conflict with that decision.
Read more at The New York Times.
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