Supreme Court declines to consider blue state AR-15 ban for now

The Supreme Court declined Monday to consider a challenge to Maryland’s ban on AR–15 rifles.

Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas indicated they would have taken the case, according to the court’s order.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted AR-15s are legal in 41 states, making Maryland’s law an “outlier.” He indicated in a statement that the Supreme Court would likely address the issue “in the next Term or two.”

“Although the Court today denies certiorari, a denial of certiorari does not mean that the Court agrees with a lower-court decision or that the issue is not worthy of review,” he wrote. “The AR–15 issue was recently decided by the First Circuit and is currently being considered by several other Courts of Appeals.”

The full Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Maryland’s ban in 2024, finding AR-15s are “military-style weapons designed for sustained combat operations that are ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense.” Maryland enacted the ban in 2013 following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

In a dissent, Thomas wrote that he “would not wait to decide whether the government can ban the most popular rifle in America.”

“That question is of critical importance to tens of millions of law-abiding AR–15 owners throughout the country,” he wrote. “We have avoided deciding it for a full decade.”

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