Supreme Court won’t review Illinois ban on certain semiautomatic guns

 

The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Illinois’s ban on certain semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines Tuesday, avoiding what would’ve been a blockbuster Second Amendment case.

In a brief order, the justices turned away a series of challenges to Illinois’s law and local ordinances. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito publicly dissented, voting to take up the case.

The decision leaves the bans in place, for now, though the challenges will continue in lower courts. Taking up the appeals could’ve stood to impact laws passed in more than a dozen states banning assault-style weapons like the AR-15 rifle or certain magazines.

...Bans on assault-style rifles have become a flashpoint of the constitutional debate surrounding gun control following the Supreme Court’s landmark Second Amendment decision two years ago that changed the test for weighing the constitutionality of gun laws,

That ruling has led lower courts to strike down a dizzying array of restrictions.In six related cases consolidated by a lower court, more than two dozen plaintiffs — which include gun-rights groups, gun shop owners and individual Illinois residents — contended bans like those passed in Illinois are unconstitutional under the new test...MORE