(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) on Wednesday filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the court to hear its lawsuit challenging Maryland’s ban on many common semi-automatic firearms.

In the case Snope v. Brown, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on August 6 that Maryland’s so-called “assault weapons” ban was constitutional under the Second Amendment, a decision that FPC believes was flawed. Plaintiffs in the case included two individuals, the FPC, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

“As promised, we have petitioned the Supreme Court to review the Fourth Circuit’s terrible decision without delay,” Brandon Combs, FPC president, said in a news release announcing the action. :As a petition from a final judgment with the best Second Amendment litigators in the world at the helm, this case is an ideal vehicle for the Supreme Court to resolve exceptionally important issues. Through this case, the Court can and should make explicit how lower courts should address unconstitutional bans on so-called ‘assault weapons’ and similar laws.”

Combs added that for years, lower courts have “contorted” the Supreme Court’s precedents and wrongly held that the Second Amendment does not protect semi-automatic firearms.

“But these weapons are common numerically, categorically and jurisdictionally, popular for a wide range of lawful purposes from self-defense to sport,” Combs added. “There is no legitimate basis for the 4th Circuit to have concluded that the most widely owned semi-automatic rifles in the United States are not ‘Arms’ protected by the Second Amendment. The Court must provide more guidance on which weapons the Second Amendment covers and they should do so in this case. This immoral and abusive gun control regime must end here.” 

In the petition filed with the Supreme Court, FPC argues: “Certiorari is required to correct this increasingly widespread misunderstanding of Heller and to ensure that the Second Amendment itself is not truncated into a limited right to own certain state-approved means of personal self-defense. And in fact, members of the majority in this case joined a chorus of lower court judges asking for this Court’s guidance, noting the significance of the questions implicated here and the need for the Court’s further direction to bring order to the law.”

FPC also argued: “The popularity of the AR-15 is among the most well-evidenced, and frequently discussed, facts about firearms in the country. There are, by almost all estimates, considerably more modern semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 in the United States than there are Ford F-150s, America’s most popular automobile. And that is in spite of the laws, like Maryland’s here, that prohibit tens of millions of Americans from some of our most populous states from acquiring them.”

In the end, plaintiffs are asking the Supreme Court to hear the case without delay and rule, once and for all, whether bans on common semi-automatic rifles should exist given the protections provided by the Second Amendment.

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34 COMMENTS

  1. Meh. They refused to help Illinois(except CCL & permission to have a handgun in Chiraq). Then again I don’t have armed security protecting me. Whatever I just inventoried my ammo stash. The Dim coven er convention is a bit quieter than expected. They are likely betraying Israel & damning America(further)😧

    • Isn’t the IL case still in process? I thought the MD one was the furthest along at the moment.

      • You are correct. The Md case has reached final judgment. The cases in which the Court denied review were all appeals of denials of temporary injunctions, including the Illinois case. It isn’t that the Court does not want to hear these cases, it wants to hear them when they have gone to final judgment. The Illinois case is still in the trial court after the Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of a temporary injunction.

        • Then it is as much a matter of would it be before or after other circuits put out various related rulings building upon bad law or creating a circuit split vs handling it soon and not letting this grow too large in it’s scope?

        • This case was already granted cert in 2022, vacated and remanded back to the circuit court with the Bruen opinion. A 3 judge panel retried the case and one of the judges on it hijacked the entire process, eventually moving the case to en banc revue without a motion from either side of the argument. The whole thing is a freakin’ mess that needs to be cleaned up by adults.

      • The Illinois case is not final. that is why they denied cert. this case seems to have a good chance of getting a hearing at the supreme Court level. I would not hold my breath about it being quick however.

        • they don’t seem to be in a hurry to rule on this…unlike abortion..which created much more of a mess than this ever would

    • fww,

      All criminals are not Leftists. but all Leftists are criminals. Criminals tend to work together. Did you really expect real trouble at the DNC?

      • Yes I did. And a lot of folks don’t like the jihad crowd. The day ain’t over & the lamesteam media isn’t covering a lot of bs. I live a scant 10 miles from Chiraq & my neighborhood is going to he!! Lots of bs that used to “up north” is now here like pitbulls, punks & the mentally ill/demon possessed crowd.

        • My view is that the Leftists have decided the jihadists are fellow travelers, at least. Which should scare the shit out of pretty much everybody, including the jihadists, LOL.

          That said, I don’t expect senescent heroes like Slick Willie to be upstaged by Abbie Hoffman clones, whilst he moans and groans about nursing homes.

        • l just don’t expect senescent heroes like Slick Willie to be upstaged by Abbie Hoffman clones, whilst he moans and groans about nursing homes. But yeah, outside the perimeter could be different.

    • meh…Instead of defining Gun Control for lawmakers a lot of Gun Owners sit on their butts and time and time again allow an Agenda Rooted in Racism and Genocide to Skate On By…If I had to hide my rifle in an adjoining state I would e-mail or call my state lawmakers and give each a Gun Control History Lesson and I would not stop until I get fitting replies. BTW…If you think repeating bigoted sht like “Chiraq” is going bring your guns home…think again.
      https://youtube.com/watch?v=qPyc0J6ayk8&feature=shared

    • You mean Barnett v. Raoul, one of several challenges to Illinois’ bans on Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs) and standard-capacity magazines? SCOTUS didn’t blow you off. They just sent the case back down (denial of a writ of certiorari) because a final judgement had not yet been issued at the U.S. Court of Appeals level. Once that judgement is issued it has a better chance of being heard at SCOTUS.

      quoted from the TTAG article here of the NSSF statements on the matter (can’t post the link because this post would go to moderation, but given some of my recent posts here at TTAG that didn’t violate anything at all it might not appear at all anyway with or without a link, but anyway here’s the attempt …)

      “Justice Thomas concluded Illinois’ bans are ‘highly suspect,’ finding it ‘difficult to see how the Seventh Circuit could have concluded that the most widely owned semiautomatic rifles are not ‘Arms’ protected by the Second Amendment.’ He added, ‘But, if the Seventh Circuit ultimately allows Illinois to ban America’s most common civilian rifle, we can—and should—review that decision once the cases reach a final judgment. The Court must not permit ‘the Seventh Circuit [to] relegat[e] the Second Amendment to a second-class right.”

      But Justice Thomas also wrote…

      “This Court is rightly wary of taking cases in an interlocutory posture. But, I hope we will consider the important issue presented by these petitions after the cases reach final judgment.”

  3. So, is TTAG shadow banning based on IP?

    I cannot post on here if I use my ISP address.

    VPN seems to work.

    Hmm…

    • Did you have a link? I think they revised the moderation system to catch all non-youtube links. Too much spam.

      Make your comment, and say you’ll post the link separately. The link comment should eventually be approved for consumption.

  4. Approx. 160 MILLION Americans who live in HI, CA, WA, IL, MA, MD, NJ, NY, CT, DE and DC CANNOT legally purchase a semi-auto AR style rifle or a magazine over 10rds. SCOTUS has been ignoring this since 1989 when CA banned all “assault weapons” or what I call normal semi-auto rifles. Plus the mag bans in VT & CO and pending gun/mag bans in OR. Justice delayed is Justice DENIED.

  5. When they wrote the law here in Md. there was one exemption for a Colt Heavy Barrel AR (that was not in in production at the time of the bill signing). Problem is Md. broke federal law in the way it was written. The Govt. i.e. state of Md. is not allowed to selectively pick winners & losers. There are other quirky restrictions here that don’t make since, but maybe it’s the history of some firearms; Semi-auto Thompson, semi-auto M1 carbine, semi-auto M1A etc..

    • from the video…

      “So, Elon Musk just stirred the pot again on X (formerly known as Twitter for all you stuck in 2022). This time, he took a shot—pun intended—at the gun emoji. You see, back in the day, the gun emoji looked like an actual gun, a revolver, and then it slowly started to devolve into a Nerf gun, thanks to the tech overlords who thought we couldn’t handle a realistic representation of a firearm in our digital conversations.

      But leave it to Elon to roll in, buy the platform, and change it back to something that actually resembles a real gun. And not just any gun, but—a 1911.

      Musk called out these other tech giants—Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Facebook—for what he called the “woke mind virus.”

      He Tweeted: ‘Nerfing of the gun emoji matches rise of the woke mind virus, as a core tenet is equating fake harm with real harm’

      Attaching a picture of the gun emojis changing over time.

      Around 2016, groups like New Yorkers Against Gun Violence (NYAGV) decided that having a realistic gun emoji was just too much for our fragile society to handle. So, they launched the #DisarmTheiPhone campaign.

      They basically told Apple, ‘Hey, you guys have emojis for everything under the sun, but that gun emoji? It’s gotta go. Replace it with something friendlier, like a squirt gun, because, you know, that’ll totally reduce gun violence.’ I’m not even kidding—this was their logic.

      And Apple, being the progressive tech giant that it is, caved. In 2016, they swapped out the revolver for a bright green squirt gun, probably thinking it was a harmless little change. But what they didn’t realize—or maybe they did—was that they were laying the groundwork for a much bigger cultural shift.

      This wasn’t just about emojis. No, this was about controlling the culture. You see, the anti-2a lobby understands that to win the long game, they’ve got to shape how we think, how we talk, and yes, even how we text.

      By changing the gun emoji, they were chipping away at the very idea of gun ownership.”

  7. The Huge Ruling That Says Machine Gun Bans Are Unconstitutional

    Did you ever think after the Bruen opinion was handed down that there would come a day where a Federal Court ruled that the Federal ban on machine guns is unconstitutional? Washington Gun Law President, William Kirk, discusses that exact scenario in a huge ruling out of Kansas today in the matter of United States v. Morgan. The Court has found that 18 U.S.C. Sec. 922(o) is not supported by historical analogues and since the Second Amendment clearly covers this activity, the prohibition on possessing machine guns is unconstitutional.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAY3jAmgGcM

  13. the machine gun rule..[NFA]..allows states to outlaw them as they please…does that establish precedent for states to do the same with AR’s?

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