I suggest people follow Charles Nichols because he pays attention to details most people overlook. If you want to know what’s happening at the Supreme Court before the media starts talking about it, he’s one of the few people consistently tracking those developments. Whether you agree with all of his views is beside the point; the information he gathers is often valuable in its own right.
I didn’t publish an update last week because there were no new Second Amendment cert petitions distributed to the conference for a vote.
This week, in addition to the five “hardware” petitions (“assault rifle” and “large capacity” magazines), we have ten petitions to which waivers of the right to respond were filed to eight of them. A waiver to respond coupled with no response requested invariably means the petition will be denied.
The best of these is:
Jose Reyna, Petitioner v. United States No. 25-7268
QUESTION PRESENTED
The question presented is whether modern firearm restrictions may be justified by “loosely” similar historical analogues or whether this Court’s precedents demand a more stringent level of generality.
Unfortunately, cracking down on the frivolous analogies cited by the lower courts in upholding unconstitutional gun laws is something the Supreme Court has been refusing to do since the Court first held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right independent of service in a militia. That case was District of Columbia v. Heller, which was decided eighteen years ago this month.
There are three more conferences scheduled for this month. At the end of the month, the justices will go on their summer vacation and will not return until the “Long Conference” at the end of September. The next term begins on the first Monday in October.
By Charles Nichols
