Why the Supreme Court declined to hear 10 different Second Amendment cases.
Americans have been fighting over guns with growing intensity since the onset of the culture wars in the 1960s. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to sit back and let the battle rage. The court opted not to hear 10 different gun-rights cases, including some that would have enabled the justices to clarify key questions about the scope of the Second Amendment.
The court hasn’t decided a major gun-rights case since 2010, when it said the Second Amendment applies to states and cities. Gun-rights advocates, their appetite whetted by the landmark 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, which established an individual right to gun possession, had hoped to rack up dozens of supplemental victories in the high court by now. But something keeps stalling their progress.
It takes four justices to accept a case. There seems little doubt that Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas are strongly pro-gun rights. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, when he was a member of a lower court, wrote an opinion so gung-ho, it reads like an audition for a job with the National Rifle Association (or perhaps a plea for NRA backing, which was subsequently rendered, for a seat on the high court).
